The Keystone XL Pipeline is Probably a Very Bad Idea.

The beginning of the problem.

Any discussion of oil pipelines must begin with one unavoidable fact. That fact is this. All oil pipelines leak. Sometimes it is a little, sometimes a lot, and sometimes -too often- in gargantuan fashion, but all of them leak at multiple points along their path. Pipelines pump corrosive chemicals down their length, at high pressure. Heat, pressure, and a corrosive chemical mix have predictable effects on the seals that join pipeline segments as well as the pipe segments themselves. Hence the fact, all pipelines leak. Couple this with poor leak and spill detection systems and you have a prescription for an expensive disaster.

This will certainly be true of TransCanada Corporation’s proposed Keystone XL Pipeline (hereafter XL), and maybe more so than for most other oil pipelines. The XL will be moving oil of an unconventional nature called tar sands crude. More specifically they will be extracting a highly viscous petroleum product called bitumen from a semi-solid matrix of water, sand, and clay.¹ This form of petroleum is similar in smell and appearance to tar. Viscosity is one key here. Even with diluting agents (often natural gas, or synthetic oils, and solvents) pumping bitumen will require higher pressure to move down the length of a pipeline. This increases the heat and pressure on the seals and pipes which hold the bitumen in the pipe and keep it out of the environment. There is also some evidence that this mixture of chemicals is actually more corrosive than that found in other crude oils.²

Bitumen Extraction: an ecologically costly process.

Getting bitumen out of the ground is not as easy as for other types of oil. In other oil extraction process it is a matter of striking a well and pumping a liquid up from the depths of the earth. Those drills can be quite spectacular feats of engineering but the basic principle is fairly straight-forward. Bitumen is different in that extraction requires some process of strip mining or chemical leeching. This is immediately damaging to local ecosystems as it involves the clearing of forest and topsoil, referred to as “overburden” by the oil industry, to get at the tar sands beneath. The clearing can be significant as it takes about 2 tons of oil sands to produce one barrel of oil, meaning 2000 pounds of oil sand produces about 250 pounds of oil.⁴

The process of pre-refinement (just making it ready for transport for further refinement) of bitumen is also one of the most costly, pollution creating, water intensive ways of producing usable fuel products. Which is to say that it uses up vast amounts of water, produces large quantities of CO², and leaves the areas of processing inundated with an increased concentration of heavy metals, which are everywhere present in the tar sands matrix.  

Bitumen extraction is so costly in fact, the oil industry use to ignore it as a source of oil. The profit margins after processing were just not large enough to merit developing. However, as easier-to-process oil becomes rarer, this more expensive, less efficient, and more polluting method of oil extraction is becoming a viable economic option for oil companies.

Once separated from its sandy prison, bitumen, now a very thick slow moving liquid (sometimes even semi-solid), must be diluted before it is ready to make its way down a pipeline. This process, called upgrading, is accomplished by mixing it with chemicals, and some type of lighter petroleum product, natural gas, light synthetic oil as well as trade secret solvents. This produces a complex toxic mix that will be pumped over land and waterways.

Carcinogens, Teratragens, and Mutagens, Oh My.

Next time you pump your gas, read the warning label on the pump. It will remind you to not spill any gasoline on your skin (if you do, immediately wash it off) and not to spend an excessive amount of time breathing in the sweet fumes. This warning exists because gasoline is absolutely terrible for your health. As it happens, bitumen in the pipeline is much more dangerous, more toxic than the fuels you pump into your vehicle.

All fuel products, as well as many other petroleum products, are known to harbor a dangerous suite of chemicals that are ill suited to bring those exposed to them good health and a long life. There are three main classes of effects these chemicals can produce in the exposed.  A carcinogen is any substance in which exposure produces an increased risk of developing cancer. A mutagen is any agent that produces genetic changes in those exposed to that agent. A teratogen is any agent that produces changes in the development of an embryo. These agents can have multiple effects. That is to say a single chemical can be responsible for all three classes of injury. Bitumen in the pipe has more types of these compounds than refined fuel owing to the mix of solvents and diluents needed to allow it to flow down a pipeline in the first place. Like gasoline, diluted bitumen (referred to as dilbit) has the familiar, potent carcinogen 1,3 Butadiene, for which there is no known safe amount of exposure, but bitumen also has many more dangerous chemicals and heavy metals than regular gasoline.

For instance bitumen has many more benzenes than refined gas. Benzene, from which this class of compounds gets its name, is itself present in bitumen and is one of the most dangerous chemicals to be exposed to. It is responsible for all three classes of injury listed above and is associated with a host of other physiological catastrophe. Benzenes as a class are highly toxic and they are very well represented in crude oil.  Other, less toxic benzenes can also be found in bitumen and the complex solution necessary to make it pipeline ready. That is to say, turn it into dilbit. Naphthalene, which occurs naturally in oil tars including bitumen, is a known carcinogen. Acute damage from exposure to large quantities of naphthalene can cause damage to or destruction of red blood cells. Methylbenzene, also called toluene is also found in dilbit mixtures. Its smells like paint thinner. If inhaled it can cause many of the same physiological responses as benzene and Naphtha -- nausea, loss of vision, loss of color vision, fatigue, weakness, light-headness, and if exposed to fumes for too long, unconsciousness and death. Though if the exposures are corrected quickly people recover just as quickly. Methylbenzene also has a lower carcinogenic potential.⁶  That is just a brief tour of the chemical wasteland found in dilbit, all of which affects the biota. 

Spill in a Michigan River, or dilbit is hard to clean up.

The Kalamazoo River stretches from its source waters in North Adams, across one hundred and thirty miles of Michigan running through parks, through or near ecologically sensitive areas, near cities and over private lands before its mouth empties into great Lake Michigan. Near this river, too near, as it turned out, ran an oil pipeline specializing in dilbit from tar sands in Alberta Canada.

The day is July 25 2010, the sun is still probably shining, has not set in any event, it is 5:58 pm and Line 6B has just ruptured.⁷   The largest and most expensive land based oil spill has begun and is leaking into the Talmadge Creek, a tributary of the Kalamazoo. No one witnesses this event but we know with great precision when the rupture occurred. We are privy to this because engineers at the operating company, Enbridge, got the alarm the moment it happened. The engineers however don’t believe their equipment. They suspect it is an air bubble. They elect not to get a visual verification of this even though there is a pump station less than 3,168 feet away from the site of Line 6B’s rupture alert. Instead, Enbridge employees continue to pump dilbit into the pipeline, while they increase the pressure hoping to dislodge the air bubble they imagine is giving their pipeline so much trouble. Without visual confirmation of pipeline integrity, Enbridge continues to pump for nearly eighteen hours. They pump until an employee of the state of Michigan happens to witness the ruptured pipeline, and reports the spill. By this time, though, the damage is done. Between 800,000 and 1,000,000 gallons of dilbit have been spilled.

The Talmadge Creek tributary, now from the site of the spill onward just a vector for poison, quickly takes the dilbit to the Kalamazoo, and before the surface flow of the oil is stopped, more that 35 miles of the Kalamazoo must be closed, the spill nearly coming to the mouth of the river. The spill causes many households to have to be evacuated, and many more households than that are warned not to drink their water. Had the spill been worse, or caught later, it might have entered Lake Michigan, threatening an important resource for several million people and several states. It very nearly does get that far.

Enbridge didn’t tell the first responder clean up crews they were dealing with dilbit. They are not required by law to divulge this information, though it would be very important for first response teams coming to large spill to know. In fact oil companies like Enbridge are not required by law to divulge what is flowing down their pipes at all even though such a catalogue of ingredients would be incredibly helpful to first responders as they form their plan of action for tackling a spill and protecting themselves while in the process. Oil companies are allowed to protect their dilbit solutions as trade secrets. One has to suspect that they just don’t want to have to deal with the problems of running fairly dangerous chemicals through the backyards of people who might object.

Knowing that you are dealing with dilbit and not some other hydrocarbon spill means knowing the right tactics to take. Responding to dilbit like it is simple crude oil will be a mistake because dilbit does not behave like regular oil spills.  Remember earlier when we discussed the anatomy of diluted bitumen? Bitumen must be diluted in a more fluid hydrocarbon medium to be effectively transported by pipeline. When not contained in a tube and under pressure –as in spill conditions- the diluting agents evaporate and leave the heavy bitumen behind. When this happens the bitumen drops out of the water column and settles to the sediment. It is this quirk of dilbit that makes clean ups more costly and complex than oil-spill clean-ups. Though in this case it also may have helped prevent a larger ecological disaster by dropping out of the water column before hitting Lake Michigan.

The Kalamazoo River Spill occurred in 2010. As of 2013 the EPA estimated that between 100,000 and 180,000 gallons of bitumen still lay at that bottom of the Kalamazoo river bed.⁸ As of late 2013, the spill has cost more than half a billion dollars to clean. The project is on going.

 

The Proposed Pathway of the Keystone XL Pipeline, the Ogallala Aquifer, the Nebraska Sandhills: A microcosm of potential disaster. 

The Ogallala Aquifer

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer]

The proposed path of the Keystone XL Pipeline

1,661 miles of pipeline, that sure does seem like a lot to inspect [image courtesy of eystone-xl.com/keystone-xl-pipeline-overall-route-map/]

There are some small number of people who are not concerned about the fact that a large portion of the 1,661 mile XL pipeline will run over the heart of the Ogallala Aquifer, and abut the aquifer in a few other places and cross several major rivers in the west, but I am not one of them.

The Ogallala Aquifer is a ground water source that is situated beneath the Great Plains and runs under at least eight states to a greater or lesser degree and provides drinking water for a the majority people in Great Plains.⁹ It is part of a vast network of riparian (river ecosystems) and wetland ecosystems, (largest and most complex of these latter being the Nebraska Sandhills) and is used in much of the irrigation for farming along the Great Plains.

The Nebraska Sandhills

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nebraska_Sandhills_NE97_Hooker_County_3.JPG]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sand_Hills_Nebraska.jpg]

The Nebraska Sandhills are the dominant ecological feature of the Northern mid-Nebraska landscape. It is the largest sand dune formation in the United States and, perhaps counter-intuitively, supports vast and productive grass- and wetland communities. The Sandhills stretch across 19,600 square miles, and sit atop what we might call the heart of the Ogallala Aquifer.

The secret, or at least one secret, of the Sandhills’ productivity is its sandy, porous, plant anchored soils. Beneath the lush grassland, are many layers of coarse sand and gravel. This mix, loose compared to other soil types, allows water to easily percolate through to the water table below.¹⁰  There is very little run-off in the Sandhills (nearly a quarter to one half of all rainfall in the Sandhills flows down to the groundwater).¹¹¹ At interdunal depressions, the elevated water table rises above the land and creates over one million hectares of wetlands. The many streams that are fed by the Sandhills are fed by movement of ground water, and not by run-off.

This land, until very recently has never been able to support crops. It can only be done now with the aid of modern technology and then in an unsound way, ecologically speaking. Draining the wetlands, and removing the native vegetation only served to demonstrate that sand and gravel don’t provide many nutrients for cultivated plants, and that sand, when not anchored by plants erodes very quickly in the absence of the native flora, which has a long evolutionary history with such soils. Lacking a long history of farming, the Sandhills landscape remains, to a very large extent, contiguous and pristine. The US Fish and Wildlife service have teamed with local members of the community and together have created a robust, multi-use plan that respects the value, both consumptive and non-consumptive, of the landscape that is the Sandhills. It is open for ranchers to use as rangeland. Much of the land is open to hunters, fishermen (and women), as well as other varieties of eco-tourist. There are parks and wildlife refuges, and opportunities to camp and hike. There is plenty to see. It is a major flyway for migrating birds. This vast landscape is utilized by 24-27 migrating species of bird that are of special conservation concern.¹²  

In addition to the Sandhills revenue generating uses, there are other non-consumptive uses that translate to money people in the region don’t have to pay. That is to say, having an intact, undamaged Sandhills provides services to local human communities at no cost. Without the Sandhills, these services would have to be paid for in costly technological solutions.  This saved money can be tremendous. Costanza et al (1997) estimate that, worldwide, the non-consumptive use value of wetlands is about $15,000/ha/year. This value will shift from region to region of course, but the point is quite clear. Wetlands are important to human ecology.

Wetlands microfauna aerate the soils, this facilitates plant growth certainly, but in times of heavy rain it can provide space for water and thus reduce the extent and damage of floods. This same microfauna, along with the plants and soil, function as vast filters for water moving through it into streams, rivers and into the water table, cleaning it and making it safe for both human and wild consumers of that water. Without a healthy Sandhills, humans must pay for these services out of pocket. It is always important to remember that these systems are perterbable and can be overwhelmed by toxic chemicals and ecological disturbance. Once lost, it can be very hard to restore an ecosystem to its robust, former glory.

The XL pipeline will run over the Sandhills. Over time, it will develop a few minor leaks along its length. These leaks will gently ooze out into the local environment. A major spill of dilbit in the Sandhills, which lie on top of the Ogallala Aquifer, would represent, I think, a special danger. Here, at least, there seems to be an opportunity for the heavy bitumen to percolate deep into the porous soil, and perhaps be carried into the aquifer itself, threatening the integrity and safety of the largest aquifer in the United States. It is not an exaggeration to say that any major blow to the Sandhills and the Ogallala Aquifer would acutely affect millions of lives and perhaps for a very long time.

Though, it must be admitted, predicting specifics is a hard thing. What we do know is once the hydrocarbons in the dilbit evaporate, the bitumen those components were suspending sinks through the water column to the sediment below. Would it make it to the reservoir of water below that? It is hard to say. There is also the more immediate damage that clean up itself causes. How do you clean up bitumen that has found a home in the porous sandy soils, and perhaps further down than this without further ecological damage? Who pays for the immediate costs? Who pays for the lost services that might occur owing to a major spill? Imagine a spill the size of the Kalamazoo Spill (nearly 1,000,000 gallons of dilbit) happening in the Sandhills. What might that look like?

Its important also to realize that the Sandhills and the Ogallala Aquifer are simply a microcosm of the problem of running such a pipeline over such large distances. These are just two places in which the XL pipeline represents a very real danger to both local ecosystems, but also to the human communities that are obviously impacted by the health of the environment in which they live. A massive oil spill on the tundra of Alaska may cause severe ecological damage, but it won’t impact the lives of millions of people in the way a large spill that affected the Sandhills, or the Ogallala Aquifer would. These are just two points of risk. A pipeline that runs nearly 1700 miles, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, with minor offshooting pipelines, will surely come into contact with many more ecologically sensitive areas, and perhaps in direct contact with many human communities.

The Last Word: Are the Risks Worth it?

There will be assurances. TransCanada will tell communities and politicians that the pipeline will be completely safe. They will tell these communities that they have well formulated emergency plans in place. They will regale communities and their leaders with tales of state of the art leak and spill detection systems. They will grease wheels with political donations, and then there will be talk of job creation. They will, above all things, play down the risks.

They will do this because processing bitumen produces slim profit margins. One must put a great deal of effort into bitumen refinement, at every stage, reducing the amount of profit one can derive from its processing. Given its sludgy, semi-solid nature, one wonders if its packing efficiency in tanker trucks is much less than that of regular crude. In any event, for oil companies the numbers appear to favor pumping diluted bitumen through pipelines instead of running them in tractor-trailer trucks over land, though the latter method would certainly reduce the number of gallons dumped into the environment should a tanker truck crash and spill. Over land trucking spills also have the advantage of being very quickly spotted and dealt with. It is much easier to spot such things on major roadways than it is in places far from frequent travel.

It is important to remember that Enbridge, author of the largest land based spill in US history, was playing down the risks right up until the very moment Line 6B spilled carcinogens, mutagens and teratragens into the Kalamazoo River. Enbridge had been asking for extensions of the 180 day mandatory repair period (enforced ineffectively by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration) on the 6B line just ten days before its corroded segments blew.¹³  

Ten days. 

Line 6B also seemed to possess a history of problems:

“In 2008, Enbridge identified 140 corrosion defects on 6B as serious enough to fall into the 180-day category. But the company repaired just 26 of them during that period. In 2009, Enbridge self-reported a separate set of 250 defects to PHMSA. The company fixed only 35 of them within 180 days. Instead of immediately addressing the 329 defects that now remained, Enbridge got a one-year extension from PHMSA by exercising its legal option to reduce pumping pressure on 6B while it decided whether to repair or replace the line...”

McGowan and Song (2012)¹⁴

Thus in that two year period of identifying damage, fatigue and corrosion Enbridge managed to leave 84.35 % of the damaged pipeline unaddressed (damage significant enough that, by law, it should have been repaired or replaced within 180 days). They delayed repairs and asked several times for extensions.

Of course none of this is anything new. We hear it every time oil companies wish to move into a community with their equipment, their pipelines, their deep sea drills and their oil tankers. We are told that no real ecological danger is present. Plans are in place. There is, we are seriously told, no need to worry.

The prospect of new jobs and the potential of money flowing into cash strapped communities is not something which can be ignored. Nor should it be ignored. But it must be factored into a much larger analysis. Are temporary construction jobs, and the addition of perhaps a few more permanent positions at pump stations worth the risk a pipeline might represent? If the risks are ignored in these calculations, as the oil companies assure us they must be, it is hard to see any down side. A total benefits to costs analysis must be made and this must include the kind of risks and valuations from the environment discussed above. The companies themselves will be on the hook for only a limited amount of time, and will try, when the spills occur to legally reduce their commitments to clean up and restoration. BP lost billions it could afford to lose in its spill. But it won’t bear the brunt of the long term consequences of any spill it causes. That cost will be borne by the local communities. The same is true of TransCanada. 

What the Keystone XL Pipeline amounts to is this. It is an effort to increase the profit margins on bitumen, while asking all the communities through which the pipeline must pass to take the risks and absorb at least some of the costs of any spill that occurs. TransCanada has no interest in bringing jobs to people, or even in creating a technological marvel that really would make for safer oil transportation. It is interested in making a larger profit on a product that is already incredibly environmentally irresponsible and costly to produce (more about that another time maybe). 

 Endnotes

1., 3., 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_sands

2. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/opinion/the-dangers-of-diluted-bitumen-oil.html?_r=0

6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toluene

7., 8.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalamazoo_River_oil_spill

9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer

10, 11, 12.   http://www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/pfw/ne/ne4.htm#TheLand

13, 14. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20120626/dilbit-diluted-bitumen-enbridge-kalamazoo-river-marshall-michigan-oil-spill-6b-pipeline-epa?page=show

McGowan and Song highlight several instances of lax repair work by Enbridge in part one of their informative and cautionary tale, specifically highlighting the PHMSA’s requirement that pipeline segments that cross a certain corrosion threshold must be replaced or repaired w/in 180 days. The oil companies can easily request extensions of time. This is exactly what Enbridge did for many segments of pipeline. Notorious Line 6B was no exception.

Bibliography

Costanza, R, R. R. d’Arge, R de Groot, S. Farber. 1997. The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital. Nature 386: 253-260.