Keystone XL Pipe Line: Is it Worth the Damages? Essay

In the U.S, the Keystone XL Pipeline is doing more harm than good to the environment.

The Keystone XL is a controversial oil pipeline extension that would travel from Alberta, Canada, to the United States Gulf Coast. The Keystone XL should not be built because of the damage it would cause to the environment. The oil would be found within tar sands that contain bitumen. The process of extracting the crude oil uses a lot of energy and causes a large amount of greenhouse gases. Many citizens, in Canada and the United States, are outraged because it can be detrimental to the surrounding land and wildlife. TransCanada, the company building the oil pipeline, has to receive permission from the United States government to begin construction. If the United States does not have the pipeline built and chooses to not use Canada’s oil, then TransCanada will have the pipeline built elsewhere and exported to other countries. There has been a divide between those in favor of the Keystone XL and those who are not. The Keystone XL would be able to provide the United States with a reliable source of oil, but it would also take the risk of faults in the oil pipeline and ruining parts of America’s resourceful soil. The Keystone XL will cause a negative effect on the environment and damage resourceful land; therefore, the oil pipeline should not be constructed.

Pollution is already a huge ongoing battle in the United States and if constructed the pipeline would send about 800,000 barrels of hazardous oil a day along with tons of greenhouse gases. The US Department of Environmental Protection estimates the greenhouse gas emissions from the Canadian oil will be more than 80% greater than oil refined in the US. That is roughly equivalent to the same amount of emissions released by 5.7 million passenger vehicles. Unfortunately, when emissions are passed into the air, the air cannot be cleaned, and since oxygen is a vital component in keeping humans alive, adding an oil pipeline that would put that much emissions into the air is far too dangerous for the public’s health what it’s

The extraction of the bitumen rich tar sands usually entails heating the oil while in the ground so that it may be pumped up to the surface which can be dangerous and cause harm to the surrounding area. The refining of the oil can be even more dangerous to the environment because the tar sands requires a special process of refining that would create copious amounts of greenhouse gases. Many opposing the pipeline also believe that the pipeline would not be as safe as supporters say it would be. Looking at the Keystone 1 Pipeline, the “previous pipeline was said to be safe but leaked much more than anyone anticipated. ‘In its first year, the pipeline leaked 14 times, with the largest spill exceeding 21,000 gallons’” (Swift). TransCanada claimed that the first pipeline would be safe and that it would not leak for many years, yet the pipe still leaked and caused major damage to the surrounding area. This left those affected, as well as other concerned Americans, to wonder why they should trust the company with building another pipeline and why the company’s promises should be trusted again. Environmentalists and those against the Keystone XL Pipeline “also object

The Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project has brought forth many conflicting arguments, thus resulting in some parties being for it and some against it. I believe however, the risks are far greater than the rewards. The controversies surrounding the oil pipeline have brought up significant reports regarding environmental safety and concern with also safety and concern of the public. Due to the fact that presently, there is one operational pipeline running from Alberta to the Pacific Coast, I believe the introduction of a new pipeline would have disastrous consequences if something were to happen whether being an oil spill or a fire. The NEB (National Energy Board) failed to mention significant situations in which this pipeline could significantly

Next comes the issues with the refining of the tar sands oil. This is where Texas comes into play and how the refining of such dirty oil will affect communities and people located in the state of Texas. “Refining tar sands oil is dirtier than refining conventional oil, and results in higher emissions of toxic sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide. These emissions

With an increasing global population and ever industrializing society 's, environmental concern is rarely given priority over economic incentive. But what people fail to realize is that our environmental failures, and relative apathy about it set up a plethora of problems for future generations to deal with. One of the most important decisions president Obama will face in the next year will be whether or not to approve the building of the Keystone XL pipeline, a massively sized, and massively controversial oil pipeline that would stretch all the way from Alberta Canada, to American oil refineries along the Gulf Of Mexico. Despite the economic incentive present, the building of the Keystone XL pipeline should not happen because of the

An environmental disaster waiting to happen in ones eyes, a potential “gold mine” in the others; the decision of the Keystone XL pipeline. What seems to be a perpetual environmental battle and one of the most politically controversial topics in the past decade. The Keystone XL pipeline is a proposed 1,179-mile pipeline running from Alberta, Canada, to Steele City, Nebraska, where it would join an existing pipe. There’s no question the intended pipeline has its pros such as its projected attribution to the American economy and the jobs it will create. However, I strongly believe the few pros it possesses simply do not outweigh the negative effects it will have. These include deforestation, the impact the pipeline could have on the environment and wildlife if there is a spill as well as the continued reliance to depend on fossil fuels; specifically coming from the tar sand oils from Alberta.

A Nebraska farmer, Randy Thompson, is opposed to the construction of this pipeline because of the impact it would have on his crops. In an interview with Mother Jones, Thompson states that, “anytime it leaked, it would go directly into the water supply” (qtd in Sheppard “A Pipeline”). The Keystone XL and the environmental impacts that are associated with are something that U.S. cannot afford to take in addition to the growing issue of global warming. While the state of our environment is such a strong issue, there are other concerns that arise with the construction of this pipeline.

The production of tar sands oil produces emissions that are three to four times higher than conventional oil. This is in part due to the large amount of energy required in the extraction and refining of the oil. Large quantities of heat, water, and chemicals are used to separate bitumen from sand, silt, and

The biggest damaging impact from oil sands doesn’t come from transporting it, but rather the energy required to extract oil from the tar sands. Oil sands are among the greenhouse gas intensive forms of petroleum to produce (NASA Climatologist Hansen, 2012).

Controversy is no stranger in the United States of America. Daily numerous new controversies are generated in politics, news media and in our personal lives at home. Recently in the past few years, the news media has been vastly covering an ongoing political debate about the construction and proposed expansion of a pipe system to transport crude oil from the Alberta province in Canada to the Gulf Coast region of Texas by the TransCanada Company. The pipeline infrastructure in place known as the Keystone Pipeline would now feature a larger section, which would be known as the Keystone XL. Many arguments to be analyzed involving economics, environmental and safety have been generated for and against this proposed Keystone XL construction.

Advocates for the Keystone XL pipeline claim that it would permit the United States to upsurge energy security and diminish foreign oil as a necessity. The United States alone requires more than eight million barrels of imported oil per day and the dispute over the projected Keystone XL pipeline isn’t a dispute of fossil fuels against alternative resources. An ample percentage of the produced oil that will flow through the Keystone XL pipeline will most likely wind up being used up outside the U.S. This project will raise the weighty value of oil in the Central region of the U.S. by rerouting oil from the refineries located in the Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico and other exporting

On January 24, 2017 TransCanada submitted a third application for a Presidential Permit to construct, operate, and maintain the Keystone pipeline system to import crude across the international border of Canada into the US. Originally, TransCanada submitted an application in 2008 and another in 2012 during President Obama’s administration. The first two applications received much scrutiny from the State Department, they conducted a combined total of five Environmental Impact Statements (EIS), multiple public comment periods, and analyzed multiple alternative routes. Figure 1 shows the entire route of the Keystone pipeline system from Hardisty, Alberta, Canada through Oklahoma and down to Port Arthur, Texas.

Speak with anybody in the oil business and they will portray pipelines as the vital expressways that convey Canada 's unlimited assets to a ravenous world market; con-structing more pipelines, they say, will be critical for Canada’s future prosperity. Speak with environmentalists or most people living where a noteworthy pipeline is proposed to go through, and you regularly get an altogether different picture; pipelines conveying bi-tumen from the oil sands are only accident waiting to happen leading to ecological calam-ity. With regards to building new pipeline foundation, a lot is on the line for Canada, which is the reason the rhetoric is so very charged and the civil argument so noisy and tumultuous. Alberta 's oil-sands, obviously, are at the heart of the issue, since most real pipelines being proposed and awaiting anticipated endorsement are intended to get that oil to the world market. The oil sands are the third biggest oil holding on the planet, after Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, with more than 168 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Pipe-lines are the vital economic life savers of practically every action of regular daily existence (Exchange, 2014). When we go on vacation, we need to fly to another place or drive to the airport by car. All that fuel was conveyed by pipeline. We fly in a plane that is con-trolled by air fuel. Stream fuel sets out by pipeline to each significant air terminal. We purchase family necessities at the nearby supermarket, which are loaded by