I wanted to say more about the tar sands Keystone XL pipeline, since many people might not know just what this issue is all about. The issue we are holding a training about on Oct.12 at 9am at the St.Albans Free Library, is NOT at all to do with the natural gas pipeline that people see coming along Rt 105 into Enosburg ! It's not about natural gas, it's all about tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada.
The KeystoneXL is being proposed to transport tar sands oil from the vast mining areas of Alberta , Canada across the entire U.S. down to refineries in Texas, for export at the Gulf Coast. Since serious objections and protests have held it up, they are also considering running the very dirty tar sands oil through a 50 year-old pipeline going through the NorthEast Kingdom ( crossing our Missisquoi River !) , so they can export it out of Portland, Maine.
Below is the longer explanation of why we should care ! ( If you are curious ! ) Thanks, Paula
The Keystone XL pipeline is a project of the Canadian oil corporation TransCanada. It is supposed to run from the huge tar sands oil mining areas in the northern boreal forests of Alberta, Canada, all the way across the mid-west over the Ogalala aquifers that provide water for farming and the millions of people living in that section of the country, down to the Texan refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. There are already plenty of pipelines carrying Alberta tar sands oil to Mid-Western states for use there. This huge pipeline is wanted in order to EXPORT tar sands oil to other countries. The fear is that production of this dirtiest kind of oil will go into high gear, sending unprecedented amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, and making it , as NASA climatologist James Hansen has said, "game over for the climate".
The total area of the Alberts tar sands that could be developed is the size of Great Britain ! The tar sands need to stay right where they are ! But the Conservative Harper government in Canada wants this revenue-producer and is undoing environmental rules of the last 40 years to push hard to make it happen. When the First Nations and the British Columbian premiere blocked a pipeline to the west coast, and American protest has delayed it from being built down to Texas, the oil companies have started to look for an eastern route to a port. That's a place where Vermont gets directly involved : we have part of a 50 year-old regular crude oil pipeline going west through the NorthEast Kingdom, from Portland, Maine's deep-water port to Montreal. Exxon,& the Canadian company Enbridge which are on the business end of that pipeline want to change the direction of the flow, and send tar sand oil east through it out to Portland for export ! Vermonters, & people from N.H. and Maine are all fighting that.
The unrefined tar sand oil is called bitumen, and is very different from regular crude. It is caustic and thick like peanut butter. To make it move through pipelines it must be heated and have volatile additives in it. A spill is very hard to clean up, because once the gaseous additives leave it, it gets more solid and sinks to the bottom of waterways, not floating on the water like crude oil, which can be skimmed off.
Because the Keystone XL must cross international lines , it must be approved by the State Dept. and, ultimately , the President. Congress doesn't have any say in approving this pipeline. That's why the focus has been on the President to reject it. He would be sending a strong message that we really do need to turn away from fossil fuels, and towards cleaner alternatives if we want to have a livable planet. We need to start leaving the dirtiest fossil fuels IN THE GROUND !