GreenWatch

B. McPherson Hold onto your hats. Here Canadians thought the Tar Sands were Oil Sands in Alberta. Some people call the product bitumen. It’s the consistency of peanut butter so won’t flow nicely in the pipelines. It needs to be heated in cold climates and diluted with a witch’s brew of chemicals, including that old favourite – benzene. When the Enbridge Pipeline carrying diluted bitumen or dilbit ruptured in the Kalamazoo River two years ago, they made some effort to clean up the oil, only it wasn’t oil. You know the old saying “If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck and walks like a duck, it must be a duck.” In the fairy tale land of the US lawmakers, dilbit isn’t oil. It’s something else again. Why is this important? Oil companies are required to pay into an Oil Liability Trust Fund that has the money to clean up the inevitable spills that occur during the transportation of oil products. But if you are transporting dilbit   or oil, not oil they don’t h...

B. McPherson We can keep on truckin until the whole world falls apart. Another dirty little secret about the Alberta Tar Sands is the production of Petcoke or Petroleum Coke as a waste product of refining the bitumen. It is estimated that emissions from the use of the Tar Sands will be about 23% greater than from refining and using conventional oil. Not so fast the organization called Oil Change International says. In their report Petroleum Coke: the Coal Hiding in the TarSands they claim that this waste product which is as much as a third of a barrel for every barrel of bitumen is sold and burned, adding to the carbon dioxide burden of the atmosphere. The refineries dealing with the bitumen sell the petcoke at a discount to coal because it is a waste product and it needs to move out. Oil Change International maintains that burning petcoke is dirtier than burning coal by about 53.6% ton for ton. “ From January 2011 to September 2012, the United States exported over 8...

By B. McPherson Around the world, the ordinary people are starting to realize the huge potential for environmental damage that our addiction to fossil fuels has created. A group in Ireland under the banner of Shell to Sea is using peaceful civil disobedience to protest the Royal Dutch Shell natural gas pipeline route. They have three stated aims in this regard: to ensure the safety of the people and environment, to renegotiate the terms of royalties for the offshore gas deposits, and to address what they claim are human rights abuses. The protesters have been interfering in the movement of materials used to build the pipeline. Two of the latest actions involved occupying a quarry that was supplying stone for the project and a woman locked herself to a tree cutting piece of machinery in an attempt to prevent cutting through a local forest. “Protests last Thursday led to a stand-off at a local quarry where the owner ultimately used a high-powered water hose in an ...

By B. McPherson There has been much controversy over the proposed Keystone Pipeline project in the US. Environmentalists rightly point out that the route that would take it through the Nebraska Sand Hills would endanger a precious natural resource. While an enclosed pipeline seems like a safe way to transport crude oil to refineries, the solvents used to dilute the thick substance can corrode the metal and cause leaks. The Yellowstone River suffered such a leak this past summer when an ExxonMobil Pipeline sprung a leak releasing about 40 000 barrels into the water. Ref: NY Times   While crude oil or bitumen could be transported by rail tankers, it would be much more expensive than using a pipeline. Currently the US uses about 15 million barrels of oil every day.  Canada is the major supplier of crude oil to the US refineries, supplying 2 324 thousand barrels of crude oil per day in September through existing pipelines, for refining on the Gulf Coast. The deman...

By B. McPherson The decision to delay the building of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline until after the US presidential elections next year may doom the project. Opposition to the building of the oil pipeline which would connect the oil fields of Alberta to refineries in Texas has been loud and growing. The proposed route of the Keystone pipeline would take it across the Nebraska Sandhills, an environmentally sensitive treasure. Any breaches in the pipeline could easily contaminate the Ogllala aquifer. This aquifer is the supplier of water to much of the Midwest, both cities and aqriculture. Those that support the building of the $7 billion project point out the economic benefits of the pipeline. Many people would be employed in good paying jobs; oil from Canada is a stable source; there could be a reduction in oil tankers plying the Gulf of Mexico. At first glance, this looks like a victory for environmentalists. It is not. It puts the focus on a different environmental treasu...