Voices Against Tar Sands: What Americans closest to the Keystone XL tar...

In the national debate surrounding tar sands expansion and projects like TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, the powerful voices of Americans on the front lines are often lost in the noise. And it’s easy to see why - the public is under a constant barrage of devious advertising that includes oil industry commercials presenting scripted comments by paid performers as the authentic views of fellow citizens; faked twitter accounts created by lobbyists that portray the lives of fictitious Americans passionate for tar sands; and industry supported lobbying groups that are characterized as nonprofit grassroots organizations. However, if you go to the front lines of tar sands expansion and the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, you’ll hear something entirely different – the authentic stories and powerful voices of those most affected by these projects. These are ranchers, farmers, landowners, businessman, housewives and civic leaders who cross the political spectrum but are unified by a shared understanding that tar sands projects like Keystone XL are not in the best interest of their communities and their country. My colleague Rocky Kistner went out and captured some of these voices in a series of interviews. These citizens and their stories are now being gathered and presented in NRDC’s new site, Voice Against Tar Sands, presenting the unscripted views of people on the front lines of tar sands expansion.

The debate surrounding the Keystone XL pipeline proposal has become so politically polarized and distorted in the media that it’s all too easy to forget what it’s about. Keystone XL isn’t just any oil pipeline – it’s a tar sands pipeline that will carry a substance called diluted bitumen, or raw tar sands, across America’s rivers and through its aquifers on its way to international markets.  Extracting raw tar sands in Canada destroys forests and pollutes water on orders of magnitudes greater than conventional oil production. Its production and use emits significantly more toxins and carbon than conventional crude. Moreover, it presents potential risks to pipelines than safety standards haven’t kept up with and when spilled, it is far more difficult to clean.

Texan landowners, many of whom have no problems with conventional oil pipelines, have found the more they learned about Keystone XL and tar sands, the less they like it. Eleanor Fairchild, whose husband was the chief geologist for Hunt oil, didn’t oppose the Keystone XL pipeline until she learned more about the tar sands that it would carry and experienced the bully tactics of TransCanada. Mike Hathorn, a Texas welder and landowner who is comfortable with the oil pipelines already on his land, is concerned about the safety of Keystone XL and the raw tar sands it will carry.  

Some people, like Susan Connolly and Debra Miller, have seen firsthand what happens when a tar sands pipeline spills. Living in Battle Creek, Michigan, these residents were at ground zero when Enbridge spilled about a million gallons of raw tar sands into the Kalamazoo river watershed. Early on, spill responders found that tar sands behaved differently than conventional crude, dramatically increasing the challenges of cleanup. Susan Connolly and her children felt the first hand effects of tar sands exposure – nausea, rashes, headaches and lethargy. Debra Miller’s business was closed for eight months and watched the spill’s long term impacts to her community. After nearly two years, the cleanup for the Kalamazoo spill continues at a cost of $725 million dollars – making it the most expensive oil pipeline spill in U.S. history.  

It’s no wonder that ranchers like Randy Thompson balked when TransCanada told him they were going to build a pipeline through his land, which happens to overlay one of the richest sources of fresh groundwater in the United States.

Meanwhile, those living in communities near the Texas Gulf Coast refineries that will process the tar sands crude from Keystone XL worry about increased emissions.

These are the voices of people who have come to understand that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and tar sands expansion do not fit in the healthy future they want for their communities and their children.  These voices represent many of the people who were arrested in front of the White House to protest Keystone XL, and later came by the thousands to encircle the White House in opposition to Keystone XL. To understand Keystone XL and the public opposition it has created, you have to hear what the people closest to it are saying. And now you can.

Please go to Voices Against Tar Sands to learn more.

Voices Against Tar Sands: People on the Front Lines Speak Out

Washington’s political wars rarely match reality back home. So when politicians and K Street lobbyists peddle the $7 billion Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, you can bet the red meat rhetoric about jobs and national security—fanciful charges according to independent analysis—is straight out of the game plan from DC’s most popular blood sport; trolling for petro dollars.  

But outside the rarefied circles of Washington, voices of a different world hold sway, voices of people who care more about community health and their children’s future than the Faustian bargains and false promises of Big Oil. These are voices of citizens from all walks of life, grandmothers, housewives, ranchers, farmers, civic leaders, willing to speak out about the growing threats of toxic tar sands oil in their lives. They are front line witnesses too often drowned out by the political din blaring from the monied corridors of the nation's Capitol.  

Check out NRDC’s new website Voices Against Tar Sands that includes nearly a dozen people's stories about their fight against some of the most dangerous mining and pipeline projects in the world. Below, farm manager Julia Trigg Crawford, recently profiled in the New York Times, talks about her critical eminent domain case over the Keystone XL pipeline, which TransCanada wants to run through her property near Paris, TX.

As my NRDC colleague Anthony Swift notes in his blog, these are the voices that really matter, people who give personal testimony to one of the greatest environmental threats we face today; the extraction of the dirtiest oil on earth.

Extracting raw tar sands in Canada destroys forests and pollutes water on orders of magnitudes greater than conventional oil production. Its production and use emits significantly more toxins and carbon than conventional crude. Moreover, it presents potential risks to pipelines than safety standards haven’t kept up with and when spilled, it is far more difficult to clean.

These witnesses include Michigan residents and small business owners devastated by tar sands-polluted rivers; Nebraska farmers fighting to preserve the world’s largest fresh water aquifer; Texas landowners battling TransCanada’s 1,700 mile land grab; minority neighbors located near massive tar sands refineries poised to spew more airborne poisons into their backyards.   

They are voices like Susan Connolly, a mother of two young children sickened by an Enbridge Energy pipeline that ruptured in July 2010, pouring a million gallons of heavy tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River, parts of which are still off limits to human contact and fishing today.

“I don’t think the communities are aware of what is going to be occurring. They don’t realize the severity of it and just how detrimental it can be to their communities…the only ones who are going to benefit are the pipeline companies. They talk about jobs and job growth. The only job growth for this pipeline that I have seen are for the workers that are cleaning up the spill.”

Four states away, people like Nebraska farmer Randy Thompson, recently profiled in Esquire magazine, have been battling TransCanada’s plans to build the Keystone XL pipeline through the environmentally sensitive Sand Hills region and ship a daily torrent of 800,000 barrels of tar sands oil across critically important agricultural and drinking water supplies.

“We have a foreign corporation here trying force their will on the American people and it’s not right. There’s no benefit to our country that I can see. We’re an agricultural state if we don’t have water we’re out of business…it doesn’t do any good to complain to your neighbor across the fence. You need to make someone else hear your voice, someone that actually has the power to do something about it, that being our politicians, so we need to make the message loud and clear to them we’re not happy with this project.”

Playground in Port Arthur, TX, future destination for Keystone XL tar sands oil. 

Photo: Rocky Kistner/NRDC

Meanwhile, in Texas landowners are fighting a multi-year battle over the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline, a plan to pump tars sands crude from the Cushing, OK, oil hub all the way to the massive petrochemical refineries of Houston and Port Arthur and then to the export market. They are the landowners who bear the risk and worry of tar sands spills near their homes and drinking water sources.

They are voices like Eleanor Fairchild, a proud Texan whose husband once had been chief geologist with Hunt Oil. After he retired, the couple bought a house and property with a beautiful lake near Winnsboro, TX, a place her husband, now deceased, called “heaven on earth.” Now, Eleanor finds her land is threatened as she battles TransCanada over plans to run its Keystone XL tar sands pipeline straight through their slice of heaven.

“At first I wasn’t against the pipeline because I did realize what tar sands was…the more I learned the worse tar sands looks. They just wanted a place to put their pipelines down and to heck with the landowner….they just weren’t very nice people when it came to what you wanted for your land…. There should be laws that protect people from this type of treatment. We have to think of children and grandchildren and what we’re doing to this earth. I think we need to leave this earth in as good a shape as we can for generations to come.”

Watch this video of Port Arthur resident Erma Lee Smith, who needs a "breathing machine" in her apartment next to the massive refineries of Port Arthur, TX.

Meanwhile, at the end of the proposed 1,700 mile conduit of Canadian crude, the petrochemical Gulf community of Port Arthur lies waiting for a bigger toxic assault. This is where community activist Hilton Kelley, the 2011 recipient of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, has been battling refineries, long a source of hazardous waste and air emissions that locals blame on respiratory problems and cancers in their community. Kelley says residents do not needs the added toxic assaults that tar sands oil will being to his home.

 “All my life we’ve lived in the shadows of refineries and chemical plants that’s located here in our area…once that pipeline is built all those jobs are gone that they said was going to bring so much wealth, those are not permanent jobs, and what were going to get is a continuous flow of this tar sands that is heavy in mercury heavy in metals and heavy in sulfur and what it’s going to do is increase the negative air quality that we presently have.”

These are but a few of the powerful voices from the front lines of the tar sands fight, voices that we will be adding to in the months ahead. They are from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, a multitude of races and communities from regions north to south. They all share a common bond; the health and safety of their families and their friends and neighbors, their cherished environments threatened by Canadian tar sands mining operations rapidly metastasizing through the boreal forests and pristine watersheds of northern Alberta. But this environmental carnage is just the beginning, part of a massive network of pipeline plans designed to pump millions more barrels of dirty tar sands oil toward U.S. refineries and the export market off North America's coasts.

Watch and listen to the voices of people in its poisonous path. These are words well worth heeding, not the empty rhetoric of petrochemical companies trying to fatten their  already profitable bottom lines. These are the people who speak from personal experience and observations in their own communities; they are the ones who speak from the heart.  

NASA's James Hansen: tar sands is the "dirtiest of fuels" and "game over...

James Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, made another appeal this week to end our reliance on tar sands oil or it will be “game over” for the climate.  If we continue to approve pipelines bringing in the dirtiest of fuels like tar sands he said, “there is no hope of keeping carbon concentrations below 500 p.p.m. — a level that would, as earth’s history shows, leave our children a climate system that is out of their control.” The production of tar sands oil has three times the global warming emissions as conventional oil production. Hansen rightly cautions that turning to these “dirtiest of fuels” for our gas tanks derails efforts to reduce our dependency on climate-changing fossil fuels.

While Hansen acknowledges the devastating climate ramifications from tar sands are a long-term outlook, one only has to look at today to realize global warming is here and already causing significant problems.  Last year, record-breaking extreme weather events tied to global warming threatened communities across the country causing more than $1 billion in property damage. Global warming poses one of the most serious public health threats facing the nation. “We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events — they were caused by human-induced climate change” Hansen said.

Hansen doesn’t apologize for sounding apocalyptic because the reality is that deep carbon emissions reductions will be needed to counter these trends.  To make these deep emissions cuts, we have no other choice than to reject expansion of tar sands and the extraction of other sources of dirtier, more destructive and more expensive forms of oil.  As the world now approaches the end of cheap and easily accessible oil, the oil industry is now exploiting new sources of petroleum that were once uneconomical to extract.  These so called “unconventional oils” are carbon laden, locked deeply into the earth and bound to sand, tar, and rock. Tar sands from Canada is one of these unconventional fuels - a very hard-to-reach dirty energy source that was left in the ground deep under the Boreal forests and wetlands for decades because it was too costly and energy intensive to remove. 

Today, our growing addiction to tar sands and to oil more generally is taking America and the world away from making progress to combat climate change.  This is not theoretical.  Building the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline alone for example would wipe out the benefits of new EPA standards adopted that would cut greenhouse gas emissions from medium to heavy-duty trucks.  Solve Climate News recently outlined how tar sands pipelines – existing and planned – are creeping on to the American landscape. 

But Hansen reinforces a critical point: rather than making the obvious choice to reject these dirty and out-dated sources of oil, we are instead increasing the “addiction” building new tar sands pipelines.  Building the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline for example is the equivalent of seven coal-fired power plants operating continuously or having 6.2 million cars on the road for 50 years. And this is just the climate emissions associated with one tar sands pipeline.  The tar sands industry has longer term plans to expand their exploitation of tar sands from just over two million barrels a day to as much as nine million barrels a day in the coming decades. 

Because the United States takes the vast majority of Canada's tar sands, we are in the driver’s seat determining whether tar sands becomes the energy of the future or a mistake of the past. What signal do we want to send?  A recent paper from the Carnegie Endowment called for strong policies to ensure that these new unconventional oil do not have significant advantage over low-carbon alternatives. Hansen called for a carbon fee from fossil fuel companies distributed to Americans to spur a reduction in oil use.  Regardless, Hansen suggests now is the time to signal a total rejection of tar sands in the name of protecting our climate.

Spinning the facts again on climate emissions from tar sands

An Alberta government sponsored report criticizing the European Union’s own independent analysis of climate emissions from tar sands has created a political debate but misses the science.  A study released yesterday by the Jacobs Consultancy paid for by the Government of Alberta tries to crunch numbers to make tar sands less of a climate problem but in fact cherry-picked certain facts to make tar sands production seem “cleaner.”  In fact, NRDC has shown that multiple independent studies have confirmed that Canada’s tar sands emissions are some of the most carbon-intensive oil on earth and a new study can’t change that fact.

There isn’t any secret about why the Alberta government commissioned this “new” study.  They are directly engaged in aggressive lobbying effort to European Union government who is considering whether to treat tar sands as different from conventional crude oil.  The EU is developing a clean fuels policy aimed at reducing the climate emissions from transport fuels by six percent by 2020.  As part of the development of this policy, they are identifying the climate emissions from different types of oils (or feedstocks) including  tar sands.  In short, the European Union’s own independent research (which found tar sands is 23 percent higher than a standard conventional fuel in the EU) threatens Canada’s efforts to export its carbon intensive fuel overseas.  My colleague Simon Mui reported on this EU sponsored study which reinforced how tar sands is among the dirtiest forms of crude oil anywhere on earth.

Unfortunately, the Government of Alberta study was initially released to reporters who were forbidden from soliciting a critique of the study.   The Edmonton Journal said “reporters who agreed to the embargo’s terms were barred from seeking advance third-party comment on the report before its release.”  An advance third-party comment on the report would have revealed serious concerns about the data used in the report as evidence the EU was overstating the carbon impact of tar sands.  In essence, journalists - and therefore the public - were misled about the performance of tar sands extraction process prompting one-sided stories.

According to the Pembina Institute who has conducted a detailed analysis showing the overwhelming majority of conventional crudes have substantially lower emissions than tar sands: “The [Jacobs Consultancy] study is not a comprehensive assessment of oilsands emissions, but cherry-picks examples of the very cleanest oilsands projects. The Jacobs research actually shows that the absolutely best (and least emissions-intensive) examples of Alberta’s oilsands production are still almost entirely more emissions-intensive than other oil production methods around the world. The study clearly reinforces that the oilsands are a significantly more polluting feedstock and should be treated as such by the European Union.”

Unfortunately, Canada’s intense lobbying efforts has resulted in a delay to the adoption of the EU policy and the release of this new study is part of that broader effort to undermine and further delay its implementation.   The science behind climate emissions from tar sands has unfortunately become politicized.  We can only hope the European Union will see past the political debate that unfolds after the release of reports like these and sticks to evaluating the science that confirms high greenhouse gas emissions from tar sands.    Progressive climate policies like the European Union’s clean fuels standard deserves nothing less.

A Win for the Whales: Iceland Stops Fin Whaling

Endangered fin whales may once again be spared from Iceland’s harpoons.  According to media reports, Iceland will suspend its fin whale hunt in 2012. Fin whales are the world’s second largest animal and are listed as an endangered species.

This is the second year in a row fin whales have avoided slaughter in Iceland.  In 2011, Iceland postponed its fin whale season citing a lack of demand for fin whale meat in Japan after the tsunami.  This year, media reports indicate that fin whaling giant Kristjan Loftsson – the man responsible for all of Iceland’s fin whaling – failed to reach collective agreement with the Association of Icelandic Fishermen on salaries and conditions for deckhands. 

Although fin whales face a welcome reprieve this year, Iceland has killed 280 endangered fin whales and hundreds of minke whales since it resumed whaling in 2006 in violation of the moratorium on commercial whaling. In 2009, Iceland dramatically increased its self allocated fin whale quota to 150 animals a year – more than three times the catch limit that the International Whaling Commission’s Scientific Committee (the world’s foremost experts on whales) considers sustainable for the species’ survival. 

NRDC and eighteen other NGOs responded to Iceland’s renegade whaling in December 2010 by filing a petition under the Pelly Amendment to the Fisherman’s Protective Act urging the Secretaries of Commerce and Interior to certify and enact sanctions against Iceland.

Former Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke responded to our petition in July 2011 by certifying Iceland for its continued slaughter of whales. In a letter to President Obama, he said that that “Iceland, by permitting its nationals to engage in commercial whaling and exporting endangered fin whale meat, is diminishing the effectiveness of the IWC conservation program.”

Led by renowned actor and marine mammal activist Pierce Brosnan, NRDC urged President Obama to impose tough sanctions against Iceland for its rogue whaling. And NRDC Members and activists sent over 100,000 messages to President Obama. 

President Obama enacted diplomatic sanctions against Iceland in September 2011, finding that “Iceland's actions threaten the conservation status of an endangered species and undermine multilateral efforts to ensure greater worldwide protection for whales.”

Unlike countries that rely on whale meat for subsistence purposes, Iceland has only a limited domestic market for minke whales, and its people have not traditionally eaten fin whales.   Iceland had hoped to find a profitable market in Japan – whose warehouses are already glutted with thousands of tons of excess whale meat from its own suspect “scientific whaling” program and whose demand for whale meat is at an all-time low following the 2011 tsunami.

Consider this a win for endangered fin whales.

Photo credit: NOAA

What's In the Name "Environmentalist"?

Someone sent me a blog post this morning titled "Don't call me an environmentalist," arguing that "we need to look beyond the divisions and understand that most of us are on the same side, regardless of the labels we place on ourselves."  Wouldn't it be great if that were all it took?

Here's my response:

First, I care less about what people call themselves than which side they’re on.  In fact, I spend much of my time these days working with people in Alaska who don’t consider themselves environmentalists – and have no aspirations to be. The only thing that matters is whether NRDC opposes the proposed Pebble Mine – and supports protection of Bristol Bay's wild salmon fishery.  We do -- and everyone should.  But tell that to the mining giants Anglo American and Rio Tinto who, so far, have a very different view.

Second, when I hear people imply or suggest that environmentalists don’t care enough about people or aren’t talking enough about green jobs, I think they must not be listening.  NRDC’s primary area of  focus in terms of staff and resources allocated is addressing climate change, and one of the central and consistently stated arguments in support of our work is the need to create green jobs, promote renewable energy, and protect people. 

NRDC’s largest public campaign at the moment is against the Pebble Mine, and I don’t think I ever talk or blog about it without emphasizing the sustainable economy and thousands of good jobs that are put at risk if that project goes forward.  I just saw a presentation yesterday by an NRDC colleague leading our fight against the Keystone XL pipeline – another of NRDC's most high profile campaigns -- and creating a green energy economy was at the heart of her presentation. 

Third, the key question for me is not what you call yourself but what is the strategy that will enable us to win.  Sometimes the message isn’t jobs even if the reality is that we‘re on the side of jobs.  Here's an example:  In our fight against the proposed Mitsubishi salt works at Laguna San Ignacio, NRDC's primary (though not exclusive) messaging focus was the need to protect the whales and their birthing lagoon, but the reality was that we were also defending the lagoon communities and their fisheries – and protecting a place that people can enjoy forever.  

The simple fact is that we could not have generated a million petitions against the salt works project by emphasizing the threat posed by the salt works to the region's economy.  And, by the way, though we were protecting gray whales in Baja – or marine mammals all over the world with our Navy sonar litigation -- the lagoon communities' sustainable economic activities, including their fisheries and eco-tourism, have prospered.  And even my own kids have gotten more out of going there  than just about anything I’ve ever done for them. 

And what about the fight against the terrible toll road proposed to be built through the California State Park at San Onofre State Beach?  The Coalition in opposition to the project turned out 3,000 people for a California Coastal Commission hearing and 6,000 people for a U.S. Department of Commerce hearing at the Del Mar Fairgrounds -- not because we were fighting for green jobs but because we were fighting to save a state park and world class surfing beach that serves 2.5 million people a year. 

Fourth, the reality is that sometimes we can’t create the kind of economy we want to create without also stopping bad projects that claim to create jobs but in fact simply perpetuate the kind of carbon-based, waste-based economy that is killing us.  Pick your issue:  Keystone XL, San Onofre toll road, Gregory Canyon landfill, Deepwater Horizon, 710 Freeway Extension, fuel economy standards, Pebble Mine, greening our ports, fighting poison run-off, Mitsubishi salt works, and on and on.  I’d like to think we could just sit around the table with all stakeholders and agree to do the right thing, but my experience has been that it doesn’t always work very well.

Finally, when I think of environmentalists, I think of just how challenging the work is, how long it takes to prevail, how complex are the strategic choices that need to be made, and how grateful I am for environmental organizations like NRDC, the Sierra Club, Audubon, the Center for Biological Diversity, and all the others who continue to take on these most difficult battles decade after decade.  And I’m grateful for others, too, who may not call themselves environmentalists but are still willing to stand up and work for clean air, clean water, healthy communities, wild spaces, renewable energy, and green jobs. 

Five hundred years from now this is the work people will care most about that we did for them today.   

Keystone XL tar sands pipeline application poses same threats and needs a...

TransCanada has applied to the State Department for a proposed pipeline that would run from the Canadian border to Steele City, Nebraska. This is a new application for the northern segment of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline that was rejected by President Obama in January. New, but still posing the same threats to our farms, water and climate. This application means that the environmental review and national interest determination will also start anew. The State Department has indicated that the review will take at least until early 2013. But more important than the timeline, is the quality of the review. A thorough, rigorous and independent review will show that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is not in our national interest.

The application comes at the same time that Republicans in Congress have been pushing a provision to approve the full Keystone XL tar sands pipeline in the transportation bill that will go into conference next week. We’ve heard loud and clear from the Senate that Keystone XL approval does not belong in the transportation bill or in Congressional hands at all and the President has threatened to veto the bill if approval of Keystone XL is included. The fact that TransCanada is moving ahead with its applications for the northern and southern segments of the project is another indication that Congress should let the normal permitting process – with its environmental review and space for public input – move forward.

This application for the northern route also comes at the same time that TransCanada is moving ahead with getting permits for the southern segment of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline project that would run from Cushing, Oklahoma to Port Arthur and Houston, Texas. In Texas and Oklahoma, TransCanada is seeking permission from the Army Corps of Engineers to rely on a “nationwide” permit, instead of individual permits, to construct some water crossings. In fall 2011, EPA wrote to the Corps to express concerns about relying on a nationwide permit to approve portions of the project. EPA’s letter identified 60 crossings in the Corps’ Galveston district alone that EPA found would not qualify for nationwide permitting and would “result in significant cumulative impacts on the aquatic ecosystem.”

This pipeline and the tar sands it will transport are nothing but trouble and landowners along the path as well as people across the country feeling the impacts of climate change deserve a rigorous new review – both to reanalyze the earlier faulty reviews and to assess the new information and changed circumstances that the application faces this time around. In Nebraska, for example, although TransCanada claims to have re-routed the pipeline around the Sandhills, it still crosses the Ogallala Aquifer and landowners in Nebraska along the new route say that their land is still in the Sandhills region. The upcoming environmental review should not rely on the earlier, inadequate environmental impact statement, but needs to make a fresh start and consider the full range of impacts that this pipeline would have on our water, land, health and climate.

So it is unfortunate, that TransCanada is claiming that a full new review is not needed and asking that the State Department just do the more minimal environmental assessment. Not only was the environmental review of the earlier Keystone XL tar sands pipeline faulty, but a lot has changed since it was undertaken. We now know that Keystone XL will actually cause oil prices to rise in the United States. We know that the oil industry wants the full project – northern and southern sections – in order to send tar sands overseas and not to help U.S. energy security. And we have seen changes in the U.S. oil market with the growth of the Bakken oil fields and plans for a dedicated pipeline to take Bakken oil to the refineries that it no longer needs Keystone XL to help out. In fact, the Energy Information Administration expects that by 2012, enough transportation projects will have come online to move current and expected increased in Bakken production.

TransCanada’s application might be the same-old, same-old. But, the State Department review needs to take a fresh look at a risky, dirty and expensive energy project.

New Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline Permit Rejected by Nebraska Residents

TransCanada’s latest Keystone XL tar sands pipeline plan filed with the U.S. State Department has done nothing to quell local Nebraska opposition to the controversial project to pipe tar sands oil all the way to the Gulf for export. Nebraska residents say the massive pipeline plan still jeopardizes the world’s largest fresh drinking water source, the Ogallala Aquifer, risking the livelihoods of farmers and ranchers across country’s breadbasket. Jane Kleeb, director of Bold Nebraska, a local grassroots group of farmers, ranchers and concerned citizens, immediately blasted the plan and said they will continue to fight it.

“The fundamental facts remain, Americans are being asked to put clean water at risk and Nebraskans are being asked to give up their property rights for an extreme form of energy that will add nothing to our energy security. We are subsidizing this extreme form of energy to boot with over 1 billion of our tax payer dollars used to retrofit a Saudi-owned refinery for their tar sands headed straight to the export market.”

Watch Jane Kleeb explain why Nebraskans are opposed to the Keystone XL pipeline, part of an upcoming NRDC series of videos, Voices Against Tar Sands, focusing on local opposition to tar sands mining and pipeline projects.  

Last January, President Obama rejected TransCanada’s 1,700 mile pipeline proposal to ship over 800,000 barrels of tar sands oil daily to Gulf refineries after House Republicans tried to short-cut the environmental review process. Now with TransCanada’s latest plan, the State Department will reset the wheels of a lengthy review process to determine the project’s environmental risks and whether it meets sufficient criteria to be in the national interest. NRDC’s Anthony Swift blogs that both are clear-cut reasons to reject the pipeline outright; 

A rigorous review of Keystone XL will show that this tar sands pipeline is not in the U.S. national interest. It is not a pipeline to the United States but a pipeline through it, putting America’s heartland, rivers and aquifers at risk so tar sands producers can sell their product to international buyers at higher prices. While that may be in the interests of tar sands producers and their financial backers, it’s not in the interest of the American public.

The Keystone XL pipeline has become a red-hot lightning rod for politicians pushing Big Oil’s misinformation campaign of hugely inflated jobs numbers and their specious arguments about national security. The truth is this is about oil industry profits and political gamesmanship, pure and simple.

That was clearly on display this week when House Republicans attached a provision to approve the Keystone XL project to their Surface Transportation extension bill, a blatant political ploy to deep-six bipartisan efforts to pass a  national transportation program that would provide the nation with desperately-needed construction jobs. As NRDC’s Susan Casey-Lefkowitz points out in her recent blog, politicians are more interested in scoring political points during an election year than solving tough economic problems and put Americans back to work.

The Keystone XL pipeline threatens American homes, farms, and ranches with tar sands oil spills and the extreme weather effects of worsening climate change. It raises oil prices. It derails continued growth in clean energy jobs. It funnels money to foreign oil corporations. Clean transportation solutions and fuel efficiency – not another tar sands pipeline – is the only way to protect America’s economy, energy security, health, and environment. Congress should pass the bi-partisan Senate transportation bill and stop playing politics with our transportation future. 

So who wins with the Keystone XL tar sands project? Not the people whose land has been taken to build a dangerous pipeline they don’t want, land that would put Americans at risk yet would give them no benefits in the end. If you want to really find out who wins with this tar sands pipeline boondoggle, just follow the money to the Big Oil lobbyists and the politicians they fund in Washington. They're the ones who will be laughing all the way to the bank if this pipeline is built, while the rest of us bear the risk and the consequences of one of the most destructive projects on earth. 

A new application for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline means a new review...

The State Department announced that it has received an application from TransCanada for a Presidential Permit for the northern segment of its proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline that the President rejected back in January. Keystone XL would carry 830,000 barrels a day of tar sands from Alberta, Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast. Tar sands are the world’s dirtiest form of oil, require a devastating process that lays waste to forests to extract tar sands bitumen, a thick low grade fuel that has significantly higher emissions that conventional crude. Tar sands pipelines also appear to pose higher risks – both in number and severity of pipeline spills. Keystone XL would grant tar sands a route through America’s heartland on its way to the international market. It would raise U.S. oil prices, put our waters and farms in jeopardy of hard to clean up tar sands oil spills, and would increase our dependence on oil – worsening climate change and undermining efforts to move to clean energy. A new application means a new review process. The environmental review for the Keystone XL process must evaluate climate, water, land, and health impacts not only of the pipeline, but of the tar sands extraction, refining and end use. The national interest determination for this transboundary energy project has to assess whether the pipeline is really needed to meet U.S. security, economic, environmental or other goals. The world of oil and our understanding of the dangers of tar sands have changed since the first time TransCanada applied for a permit for Keystone XL back in 2008. The process for evaluating this permit request needs to be thorough, rigorous, transparent and free from conflicts of interest.

So once TransCanada reapplies, what can we expect?

The process for considering whether to permit an international energy project like the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is governed by Executive Order 13337. This order empowers the State Department to consider applications for Presidential Permits, in consultation with other federal agencies and the public. The Executive Order instructs the State Department to only grant Presidential Permits for projects that are in the U.S. national interest.

However, before the State Department can make a Presidential Permit decision, it must first conduct a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review of the impacts of the pipeline and assess reasonable alternatives. NEPA requires that Federal agencies prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) before making a decision that would trigger significant environmental impacts. Keystone XL would have tremendous environmental impacts - from the expansion of destructive tar sands extraction, the risk of tar sands spills across U.S. rivers and aquifers and increased refinery and greenhouse gas emissions.

The first step in the NEPA process will be to consult with government agencies, Indian tribes and the public to determine the scope and content of the environmental review for Keystone XL.  This is an opportunity to correct issues of objectivity, transparency and conflicts of interest which plagued the first environmental review prepared by Cardno-Entrix. The environmental review for TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline should have a broad scope – including a consideration of the need for the project given numerous recent infrastructure proposals, the impacts of increase tar sands extraction in Canada associated with Keystone XL, pipeline safety issues, increased refineries emissions, increased carbon emissions associated with replacing conventional crude with tar sands, and the economic costs of continued dependence on Canadian tar sands. The review should take a hard look at areas not considered in the narrow scope of the environmental review of the earlier Keystone XL application as well as consider information about pipeline safety, species, and other areas of impact that have come to light since the review was last done on the earlier application. The review should incorporate the results of other relevant assessments such as the upcoming National Academy of Sciences study of the impact of diluted bitumen or raw tar sands oil on pipeline safety.

The impartiality of original EIS for Keystone XL prepared by Cardno-Entrix on TransCanada’s behalf has been too undermined by conflicts of interest to recycle. In the case of Keystone XL, the environmental review was done by a company that was both paid for and under contract to TransCanada to provide an EIS. It is true that federal agencies often hire third party contractors to conduct an environmental review and the costs are ultimately paid for by the project applicant. In this case, however, TransCanada appears to have largely cut the State Department out of the entire process, having selected, paid for and contracted to Cardno-Entrix to provide an environmental review for Keystone XL.

While an Inspector General (IG) investigation of conflicts of interest between the State Department and TransCanada didn’t find evidence of illegal activity, doing a job well enough to avoid going to jail is not always the same thing as doing a job well.  The IG found that the State Department’s “limited technical resources, expertise and experience impacted the implementation of the NEPA process”, forcing the Department to rely more on its third party contractor to address environmental issues. Given that its third party contractor was actually under contract to TransCanada, the problems with the EIS quickly become apparent. Ultimately, the IG concluded that EIS was not effective. Given the concerns with Keystone XL, the State Department should start from the drawing board and conduct a rigorous environmental review in which  the American public can have confidence.  This argues for a more major role being given to the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies with specialized experience in different aspects of the assessment process.

After the scope of the environmental review has been determined, the State Department will begin to prepare a draft EIS. This review should include a rigorous review of environmental and cultural impacts of the Keystone XL project. Throughout this process, the State Department must take diligent efforts to involve interested stakeholders – and that means public meetings along the pipeline route that allows affected communities to provide input during the scoping process and comment on the draft EIS.

After the environmental review process, the State Department will consider the whether the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is in the U.S. national interest. The National Interest Determination process is governed by Executive Order 13337 and should consider the significant environmental impacts of tar sands extraction, the risk of pipeline spills, higher refinery emissions, and the economic consequence of dependence on tar sands. The world of oil supply and transportation has changed rapidly in the United States even over the last year with additional U.S. oil reserves coming online and new pipelines being built within the United States. Both the environmental review and the national interest determination will need to consider new factors that go directly to the question of whether we need Keystone XL and whether it is actually in the U.S. national interest.

A rigorous review of Keystone XL will show that this tar sands pipeline is not in the U.S. national interest. It is not a pipeline to the United States but a pipeline through it, putting America’s heartland, rivers and aquifers at risk so tar sands producers can sell their product to international buyers at higher prices. While that may be in the interests of tar sands producers and their financial backers, it’s not in the interest of the American public.

Understanding the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline approval provision in the...

The House is once again jeopardizing an important transportation bill by attaching non-related amendments, including a measure that would approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline that the President rejected in January. The bill is going into conference next week and many Senators have already spoken out strongly against having Congress approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The House Keystone XL provision seems to rely on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), but really is a vehicle for Congress to rubber-stamp this dirty energy project without a process to assess the threat to our land, water, health, climate, economic well-being and security. Keystone XL would bring tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast for export. It would raise U.S. oil prices, put our waters and farms in jeopardy of hard to clean up tar sands oil spills, and would increase our dependence on oil – worsening climate change and undermining efforts to move to clean energy. A dirty energy project like Keystone XL has no place in the transportation bill.

So, let’s unpack what the provision to approve Keystone XL is all about: The House Federal Highway Extension bill, H.R.4348, contains a provision which would require the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to approve a permit for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. This provision is a slightly modified version of H.R. 3548, a bill introduced by Rep. Lee Terry late in 2011. While the Senate passed a bipartisan transportation bill, the House was only able to pass this ninety-day extension for transportation funding. And they used it as a place for  non-related, partisan amendments such as approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.  

Like the Terry bill, the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline approval provision in H.R. 4348 would:

1.  Give FERC 30 days to approve a permit for Keystone XL without additional conditions. In absence of FERC action, the permit will be granted by Congressional authority after 30 days.
2. Give FERC 30 days to conduct a NEPA review and approve a route modification through Nebraska. In absence of FERC action, the Nebraska route will be automatically approved within 30 days.
3. Suspend the national interest determination process required for transboundary energy projects  in Executive Order 13337 and any further environmental review of or public participation in the project under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

H.R. 4348 also contains language authorizing TransCanada to begin construction of Keystone XL outside of Nebraska before that state approves a new route. It  also changes prior language in the Terry bill that would have exempted Keystone XL from state and federal regulations such as the Clean Water Act.

When discussing Rep. Terry’s bill during a Congressional hearing and in press statements, FERC representatives have said their agency doesn’t have jurisdiction over hazardous liquid pipelines, that the provision doesn’t grant FERC actual authority, and that thirty days in not sufficient time to conduct a defensible review of Keystone XL. 

TransCanada has already said that it will reapply for permits for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. It is already moving forward with the southern segment and an application for the northern segment is expected at any time. Congressional approval of the pipeline takes away the ability of the government to carry out a thorough assessment of this pipeline and make sure it is in the national interest. For instance, in past months as gas prices have risen, the fact that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline will cause oil prices to rise has become an important issue to consider. The Keystone XL pipeline will significantly increase the price of Canadian oil in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain states, putting increased pressure on gasoline prices when American consumers are already facing great pain at the pump. TransCanada originally pitched Keystone XL as a way to get oil out of the U.S. Midwest, claiming Keystone XL would eliminate the price difference between Canadian tar sands and similar crudes sold internationally.

Americans’ health and livelihood should not be subject to partisan gamesmanship.  The massive risks that would be borne by America would reward the tar sands industry and the world market, not American consumers and workers.  Allowing Keystone XL permitting language into a bill intended provide operation funding to the transportation system puts politics ahead of good policy and risks millions of American transportation jobs in the process.