The Keystone XL pipeline is a proposed expansion of the current Keystone pipeline that would cover over 1,700 miles from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf Coast of Texas. The purpose of the pipeline is for the transport of extracted tar sands from Canada to the Gulf Coast refineries and ports for export. The proposed pipeline would cross 1,073 rivers, lakes, streams, and the Ogallala aquifer. The Ogallala aquifer is one of the largest in the world. It provides two million people with drinking water and more than a quarter of America’s agriculture with water for irrigation. There would be a large ecological impact, affecting communities and destroying habitats. Building Keystone XL would add 27.4 million metric tons of carbon pollution to the atmosphere per year, adding to the global climate change dilemma. Aside from the damage as a result of constructing the pipeline, oil spills cause contamination and are costly to cleanup. The company proposing the expansion, TransCanada, has stated that thousands of jobs would be created. In fact the project would only create thirty five permanent jobs with the remainder consisting of temporary or contract work (“Stop Keystone,” n.d.). 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
Thesis Statement: In the U.S, the Keystone XL Pipeline is doing more harm than good.
The oil production in Canada has several significant issues that depict the destruction nature of the industry. These issues can be categorized as environmental, political, economic, and social. The environmental issues lead the pack; in that the environmental destruction associated with the industry is extensive. The environmental problems are climatic, land, water and air related (Best & Hoberg, 2015). Under climatic effect, studies indicate that the development of the tar sides has resulted to three times more greenhouse gases (GHGs) than in production of conventional oil. These environmental issues are caused by the composition of the tar sands. Unlike the convention oil, tar sands are a mixture of bitumen and sand. The process of separating the two results triples GHGs emissions when compared to conventional oil production (Koring, 2013).
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.
The Keystone XL pipeline would do little in reducing the United States dependency on Middle Eastern oil, which is actually goal established by president Obama for the sake of national security and economic growth. Another issue is that the out of the 42,000 jobs TransCanada has claimed the new pipeline will create, an analysis done by the State Department disagrees and claims “The proposed Project would generate approximately 50 jobs during operations.” All the harmful effects that the pipeline would have on the environment and the public health is not worth the creation of merely 50 permanent
Almost 95 million barrels of oil and fuel are produced each day in order to provide energy and fuel to people the world over. A major component of the oil industry is the transportation of oil through various means including oil pipelines. These pipelines are capable of transporting thousands of barrels of oil thousands of miles per day. In the United States one possible pipeline has caused a lot of controversy and discussion on the impact it will have on the United States. The difficulty in deciding if the Keystone XL Pipeline should be built is in whether the possibility of economic growth outweighs the possibility of environmental destruction. In order to make a decision, one must first look into the history of oil pipelines. It is crucial
You wake up one day but everything seems odd. Its freezing cold in your house and you wonder what happened to the heat. You go to the kitchen and try to find something to eat and there is no food anywhere. Suddenly you hear scattering and banging in your parents bathroom.Your mom is looking for medicine because she is extremely sick but there is no medicine that she can find to help her. Do you know why, it’s because this is how our future will look like if we have nothing efficient enough to transport the oil that we use in almost everything to us.Therefore we believe the U.S should build the Keystone Pipeline XL because doing so will provide more jobs and increase tax revenue, oil is extremely essential for daily life and the keystone will help to transport our oil easier and safer.
The Keystone XL Pipeline Project has many pros and cons just as any project does, but this project has way bigger cons than most projects this country will face today. “The Keystone XL Pipeline is an environmental crime in progress.” “It’s also been called the most destructive project on the planet.” The major issues with the Keystone XL Pipeline are “the dirty tar sands oil, the water waste, indigenous populations, refining tar sands oil and don’t forget the inevitable; pipeline spills.” And these are just some of the environmental issues, not too mention how building this thing from Canada to Texas; 2,100 miles to be exact, is affecting the people and their land, as stated “this isn’t a little tiny pipeline,
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
Keystone XL is a oil pipeline system in Canada and the United States, this system was commissioned in 2010 and now owned by TransCanada Corporation. An increased amount of oil from Canada would mean a decreased dependency on Middle Eastern supplies. According to market principles, if availability of oil is increased, that means lower price for consumers. This will create almost 28,000 more construction jobs. The prospect of the Keystone XL pipeline being approved by the incoming Donald Trump administration will have little effect on Justin Trudeau's plans to get the oil to market. Keystone XL is a controversial issue because the different political parties have different opinions, the Conservatives and the Liberals both agree that yes, Keystone
If we do build the Keystone Pipeline XL it will cause environmental issues. Many environmentalist say that it could leak and damage our water supply and that the project would just expand the extraction of oil sands a heavy dirty hard to clean oil that is not at all good for our environment. Research has said that extracting oil from the tar sands generates more greenhouse gases than extracting oil through more conventional methods and therefore contributes to a greater amount of greenhouse gas emissions over time. Environmentalists also fear that a leak from a pipeline carrying the heavy oil-sands petroleum
Oil is imperative to the endurance of today’s society and plays a major role in the world’s economy. The Keystone XL Pipeline is a crude oil pipeline that is designed to run from “Hardisty, Alberta…to Steele City, Nebraska,” (About The Project). Citizens of Canada and the United States are debating the development of the pipeline. There are two sides to this issue, to either approve or disapprove the Keystone XL Pipeline, and by researching this topic I will form an opinion.
In addition to its detrimental environmental effects and commitment to furthering the use of unclean energy sources, the Keystone XL Pipeline does not offer significant benefits to the American economy or oil industry. When the Keystone XL pipeline was first proposed in 2008, there was a much higher need for more crude oil. America had just gone into a recession, gas prices were high, and many people thought that the pipeline was the answer to making this country money. However, as of January 2015 oil prices have dropped 50%, therefore resulting in cheaper gas prices (Cappiello 2). The President of the United States, Barack Obama, stated that “…the oil is going to be piped down to the Gulf Coast to be sold on the world oil markets, so it does
This memorandum addresses how the State Department of the United States should handle the pending application of the Keystone XL Pipeline. The Keystone XL Pipeline is a project under consideration that would provide a 1,664-mile extension to an existing pipeline system built by Canadian company TransCanada. The extension would transport 830,000 barrels of crude oil per day,1 which is about double the United State’s current imports of dirty tar sands.2 The extension would run from Alberta, Canada to Nebraska, where it would connect with an existing pipeline to transport the oil to refineries along the Gulf Coast of Texas. The project is expected to cost about $8 billion dollars.3
Having depicted a clear presentation of each of the arguments from opponents and supporters, this paper will now examine the strengths and weaknesses of each argument. One argument made my proponents regarding the Keystone XL pipeline is job creation. Proponents argue that the Keystone XL pipeline will create a total of 9,000 direct jobs and 42,000 indirect jobs. However, of these proposed jobs, only 35 permanent jobs are to be created. Proponents defend this small amount of jobs by stating that this clearly show how efficient the Keystone XL pipeline truly is. Opponents to the Keystone XL pipeline argue that this minuscule amount of jobs is simply not worth risking the environment. While advocates of the Keystone XL pipeline portray the
The environment is a very important thing to take care of and can be very fragile. In the recent years humanity hasn’t been doing much to take care of the earth, and instead is destroying it in the name of progress. One of the harmful things that could really impact the environment is the North Dakota Pipeline. Some facts about the pipeline is that it is owned by Energy Transfer Partners who are the owners of Sunoco. Sunoco has had multiple onshore pipeline leaks and disasters that have devastated many environments. The planned pipeline is going to be 1,134 miles long and will cut through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois, by doing that it crosses fifty counties in total. Pipelines in general aren’t really the most reliable things