The Keystone Tar Sands Pipeline: What You Need to Know

What is it?

The Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline is a proposed extension to the existing Keystone pipeline system, owned by energy giant TransCanada, to transport tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to the gulf coast.

Why is there opposition to providing a permit for the pipeline?

• Producing tar sands oil requires much more energy and water, and generates three times more carbon pollution than even conventional oil, which triples the impact on global warming. Renowned NASA scientist James Hansen has said building the Keystone tar sands pipeline would be “game over” for the climate.
• The unrefined tar sands extract, bitumen, is an almost-solid, very corrosive sludge, which must be heated and diluted with carcinogenic benzene to be transported along the pipeline. This makes transportation especially dangerous and prone to spills. In fact, there have already been 14 leaks in the first year of the original Keystone pipeline. Scientists and public health experts are especially concerned about the fact that the proposed XL extension will cross nearly 2,000 rivers, the huge Nebraska Sandhills wetlands ecosystem, and the Ogallala aquifer, the source of drinking water for two million Americans.
• The pipeline would result in substantially higher oil prices in the Midwest.

What are the arguments for building the Keystone tar sands pipeline?

Proponents argue that America needs more sources of oil from friendly neighbors to make us less dependent on oil from unfriendly or unstable regimes. They also argue that building the pipeline will create jobs, and that since Canada will export the tar sands oil to someone, it might as well be to us. These assertions do not hold up to scrutiny.

The Facts

The pipeline will result in negligible job creation, and may cost more jobs than it creates

• In 2008, a report included in TransCanada’s own permit application for the pipeline said they anticipate “a peak workforce of approximately 3,500 to 4,200 construction personnel” over the course of two years, and there’s no telling how many of these construction jobs will be in Canada.
• The pipeline will generate few manufacturing jobs in the U.S., as the steel for the project is being produced abroad by foreign companies.
• The Cornell Global Labor Institute found that it would kill more jobs than it would create due to the increased cost of fuel and spills.

The pipeline will not make America more energy-independent.

The pipeline would only ease America’s reliance on other foreign oil if it were a plan to import oil to the United States. Unfortunately, it is actually a scheme to allow tar sands companies and refiners like the Koch brothers to export the oil from the Gulf Coast to other countries, reducing US supply and therefore allowing the companies to charge more for oil.

• The Gulf Coast, where the pipeline would end up, already exports 1.8 million barrels of gasoline and diesel a day.
• The Midwest and Great Plains already have as much tar sands oil as they need – in fact, oil in the American heartland has been selling for about $15.00/barrel less than the global price because of what oil companies privately describe as a “glut” of crude in the region.
• The Koch brothers, Shell, Valero, and the other tar sands players plan to export Canadian tar sands oil from Gulf Coast refineries to OPEC-dominated markets, where it will sell for a higher price, thus forcing American customers to pay more for the oil they’re already getting.
• TransCanada has admitted in its permit applications that the Keystone XL will increase oil prices in the Midwest by $6.55/barrel. See also.

Refusing to build the pipeline will not result in the tar sands oil going to other countries.

TransCanada has proposed Keystone XL precisely because Canadians won’t permit it to build the much shorter pipelines that would be required to get the oil to Canadian ports. If this pipeline isn’t built, tar sands oil will stay in Canada or the Midwest US, to which a pipeline already exists. Most of the tar sands oil will stay where it belongs — in the ground locked up in sand.

February 2012