1. If not the West, coal companies will go elsewhere

While the coal export market is definitely complex and difficult to understand, there is one part that is relatively straightforward: if the supply of coal export pathways in the West is too costly, coal companies will take their demand for these pathways elsewhere. Coal companies are already exploring their options in Mexico and the U.S. Gulf Coast:

“The West Coast is geographically better located than the Gulf coast for exports to Asia, but it has encountered stiff opposition by the environmental groups for port expansions. As a result, coal companies are forced to use the Gulf coast for export activities.” [Kinder Morgan Energy Partners] has been proactive in developing coal handling facilities and terminals in the Gulf coast. – Forbes  Magazine, Trefis Team

No matter where the coal companies try to take their exports, the harmful impacts will follow. This leads me to #2.

2. We know the legacy and reality of coal mining—it’s bad for people, wildlife and the environment

Tens of thousands flocked to the U.S. coal industry in the 19^th and 20^th century and thousands remain in the industry today. Nearly two hundred years of intense coal mining has left a legacy most are familiar with:

• Significant health risks including cancer and respiratory disease
• The growing idea that the health risks of coal mining outweigh the economic benefits
• Fish and wildlife habitat destroyed by mountain-top removal and strip mining
• Birds, fish, animals, and humans poisoned by long-term exposure to mercury contamination

Since we are now aware of the many risks of coal mining and burning, I’d like to fight it wherever it tries to go and leave a new coal legacy to my future children. This leads me to #3.

The Legacy of Coal Mining: strip mining operations at the Navajo mine (left and right) destroy habitat and impact our communities (middle). Credits: Terry Eiler (middle right), Lyntha Scott Eiler (remaining)

3. Stopping the export of U.S. coal is the latest fight in a wider effort to reduce fossil fuel consumption and increase the use of alternative and renewable energies.

Efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption include driving less, conserving energy, and reducing consumption of goods and services. Efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption also include campaigns to stop tar sands and the Keystone XL pipeline, natural gas fracking, and oil shale. A wealth of alternative and renewable energies that safeguard people and wildlife are available. Stopping the export of U.S. coal is simply the latest in a long list of ways we can work to reduce fossil fuel consumption and increase the use of alternative and renewable energies, which leads to #4.

Wind energy is just one of many alternative and renewable energies available to reduce fossil fuel consumption. Credit: Imagefusionstudio

4. It’s our responsibility as a nation to address the fossil fuel emissions that have gotten us into the climate change mess in the first place.

The U.S.’s significant historic and current emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, largely from fossil fuels, have gotten us into the climate change mess we are in. As a long-time global economic leader and industrial innovator, the United States is both well-equipped and ethically responsible for showing leadership and innovation to reduce fossil fuel consumption and tackle climate change. And this brings me to #5.

5. We should not risk our health and the wild places we cherish to support exports that will only return mercury and greenhouse gas emissions to our communities.

We don’t need the contaminated food, water, and air that more coal exports will bring. Instead, we should fight the coal export battle, as well as other dirty energy battles. At the same time, we should export the alternative and renewable energies that will help put the globe on a healthy track to a sustainable tomorrow.

For all these reasons, it’s time to stand up and fight!

Keep track of our efforts to stop coal export in its tracks: like us on our regional and Power Past Coal Coalition Facebook pages, and follow us on Twitter.

Join me in standing up for Mountain Heroes–add your photo to the petition.

Stand in Solidarity with Mountain Heroes

Join me today in standing in solidarity with Mountain Heroes — add your photo and words of support to the online photo petition hosted by our friends at Earthjustice.

The heroes fighting for the mountains they know and love are asking us to stand with them against mountaintop removal mining and for a better way forward by joining the Mountain Heroes petition.

Mountains & Wildlife Destroyed

As I stood with local activists in the Coal River Mountain Valley, they pointed to the nearest mountain ridge and explained that hidden just beyond it were vast expanses of destruction.

The rich forests and streams where my new friends grew up exploring, searching for ginseng, and fishing were gone–replaced with rubble that resembled a moonscape.

The forests and streams of central Appalachia are abundant with diverse plants and wildlife–bears, coyotes, foxes, owls, Wild Turkeys, salamanders, trout and colorful darters. But, coal companies are blasting vast mountain ranges and dumping the rubble into huge valleys, destroying forests and communities. Coal processing plants are spreading coal dust and endangering the lives of everyone living in the valleys below the massive toxic slurry ponds, built with earthen dams that have collapsed with deadly consequences.

Join the Struggle Against Mountaintop Removal

Seeing the contrast from rich wildlife habitat to wasteland while visiting the struggling communities kept poor by “King Coal” is unlike anything I’ve seen before or since. Yet, people fighting for their homes and mountains are undaunted. They continue the struggle against wealthy coal companies and their massive tools of destruction.

Show your solidarity with Mountain Heroes against mountaintop removal and for clean energy.

More evidence just came to light this week that the Canadian Prime Minister and his Big Oil allies are eying China, not the U.S., as their biggest market.  That’s a critical development, since backers of the pipeline wrongly say tar sands will improve U.S. energy security.

We’ve said before that Keystone XL saddles the U.S. with all of the risk –particularly, the risks of a major oil spill – and almost no benefit. Americans could become little more than middle men, taking the risk of spills and increased pollution, while the oil goes abroad. So why do this? In a nutshell, petro companies have one goal – to sell as much oil as they can for the highest price.

The new Bloomberg story linked above says this of Canada courting the Chinese, and vice versa:

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Alberta Premier Alison Redford have visited China this year to promote Canada’s energy industry and build trans-Pacific ties. Harper told Chinese business leaders in February during a dinner in Guangzhou, China, that he wants to take Canada’s economic partnership to “the next level.”

“We want to sell our energy to people who want to buy our energy,” Harper said at the time. “It’s that simple.”

The Chinese are responding, ponying up investment dollars in Canada.

China, seeking to add oil and gas reserves to meet demand in the world’s largest energy-consuming country, sees Canada as a ready supplier as it prepares to expand its pipeline network to the Pacific coast for exports to Asia.

Over the past decade, Chinese companies have spent $53.4 billion on Canadian oil and gas fields and companies, compared to $30.8 billion invested in the sector by U.S. companies, according to Bloomberg data.

What’s the best route for tar sands to move overseas.  There’s actually very few.  The controversial Northern Gateway proposed pipeline to British Columbia is one, but more likely it’s Keystone XL.

Where is the oil from Keystone XL really headed? (Courtesy of NRDC)

Canadian Government, Oil Barons Looking to Asia

On the day after President Barack Obama rejected the Keystone deal, Canadian officials stressed that they were actively working to expand their oil export markets beyond the United States. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said, “I think it is particularly essential for this country that, over time, we have the capacity to sell our energy products into the growing markets of Asia.”

“I am very serious about selling our oil off this continent, selling our energy products off to Asia. I think we have to do that,” Harper stated in a December interview with CTV National News.  These pronouncements are from the PM who wants to make Canada a “superpower” in global energy markets.

After President Obama ditched Keystone, Brenda Kenny, head of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, also chimed in, saying that the delay underscores the need for the diversification of markets, particularly Asia.

The industry was given a chance to put the notion to rest on Capitol Hill recently, but pipeline builder Transcanada refused to agree to a congressional proposal to limit the oil from its pipeline to the U.S. Why? As shown in a compelling graph by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the U.S. Gulf Coast (PADD 3) is rapidly turning into an oil export center due to the large refining capacity, which makes America increasingly the middle man, importing huge volumes of crude and exporting more refined oil products like diesel and gasoline. In short, we take the risk of spills and pollution, but we see little benefit.

Texas Refiners Look East

What is the intent of the oil companies at the receiving end of the pipeline?

The Texas refiners at the terminus are all set to refine and ship abroad.  For example, Valero has contracted to “take at least 100,000 barrels of tar sands crude a day from Keystone XL until 2030,” contends OilChange International’s executive director Stephen Kretzmann.  Valero has laid out an aggressive export strategy to its investors and is beefing up its Port Arthur refinery to process crude into diesel.  Valero has been a Keystone cheerleader from the get-go.

Targeted for Tax-Free Zones

Some Keystone promoters have conceded that tar sands oil would skip Midwest refiners and customers and land in Gulf Coast refineries, refineries that are located in tax-free foreign trade zones.  No taxes?  This would no doubt make international sales attractive and lucrative.  In the international market, the oil would likely get a higher price than selling to the U.S. market.

In a stunning display of special interest greed, global oil companies have created an “offshore tax haven” right on U.S. soil. Oil Change International’s report, Exporting Energy Security: Keystone XL Exposed, details this strategy as laid out by the oil companies. They get a free ride as Americans get used.

China Is Hungry for Energy

(Photo by Philip Jägenstedt/Flickr)

Since the late 1970s, China has engineered a vigorous economic expansion by investing in industrial production, welcoming foreign investment and encouraging more private businesses.  Some analysts have predicted that China’s economy could surpass the United States’ some day.  It doesn’t take a Ph.D. analysis to see it day to day. Americans need only look at product labels to see the flood of imports bearing the “Made in China” label, from holiday ornaments to skateboards, from trinkets to turbines.

China is a ravenous energy consumer. A fast-growing economy with a strong manufacturing sector needs energy.  The country’s coal imports jumped 11 percent in 2011, reported Bloomberg News on January 17.  China’s oil imports went up five percent last year, according to the January 23 Wall Street Journal.

China’s energy needs will balloon 150 percent by 2020, predicts the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security.  “Its oil consumption grows by 7.5% per year, seven times faster than the U.S.,” they say.

“China is aggressively looking worldwide for oil,” wrote David L.O. Hayward in the Journal of Energy Security as early as 2009. The International Energy Agency expects China’s oil imports to grow from 3.5 million barrels a day in 2006 to 13 million barrels a day by 2030.

So China’s economy is virtually an “open invitation” to fuels like coal and oil.  An energy-hungry country with weak environmental standards is a near-perfect market for Big Oil and a Canadian government intent on exploiting its tar sands supplies with few questions asked.

That led respected oil economist Dr. Philip Verleger, who has a long and successful track record of accurately predicting oil market developments to conclude in his analysis of Keystone XL (The Tar Sands Road to China) that the pipeline “will facilitate Canadian crude exports to China rather than the United States.” Because oil companies keep most of their plans secret, we don’t know for sure how much oil would go to China. I say, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

Building a More Direct Path

Another telling piece of evidence:  the Canadian government and the Canadian oil industry also want to steamroll west and build Enbridge, Inc.’s Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta through the Rocky Mountains to carry 500,000 barrels a day of tar sands crude through some of British Columbia’s most pristine habitat, to the British Columbia coast where 200 supertankers would await. This pipeline seems aimed directly at China.  After all, shipping to Asia from Canada’s west coast would not bring on the headaches of getting those prickly international permits and environmental assurances from the U.S. government.

Not in the National Interest

The Keystone XL tar sands scheme is disturbing on many fronts, but troubling conclusions are unavoidable:

• Keystone is an industry-government scheme – maybe even a front – to boost oil industry profits while failing to provide clean energy to the U.S. and posing serious environmental risks to streams, rivers, water supplies and Midwest habitats.  It’s not an energy pipeline; it’s a pipeline to profits.
• President Obama is required to determine that giving Keystone a permit is in the national interest.  Keystone is not in the national interest.  It is a dangerous project designed to serve the Canadian oil interests and the Texas refiners interests who will send the oil abroad.

  Canada’s Oil: The Basics

Tailings pond north of Syncrude processing facility and upgrader (Courtesy of the Pembina Institute)

When terrible things happen in the world, it is challenging to know what to say. In 2010, National Wildlife Federation prepared a guide for parents and caregivers on how to talk with kids about the Gulf Oil Spill. It continues to bring thousands of people to our website because the tips are relevant for other events as well.

Waking up to an Oil Spill

When Susan Connolly woke up to find an oil spill in her community in July 2010, she first had to help her own children. They got sick, and then they had questions. In the video below, Susan says:

My son was only four at the time and now he’s just over five. We don’t talk about it in front of the children but he knows. Just last week they went on a class trip to a fire department and they must have crossed over the Kalamazoo River. The first thing he says to me is “Mommy we went on a class trip today and I saw the oil spill.”… It’s always going to have an impact for him because when we talk about going on a nice river walk, he says, “Mommy are we going to walk in the oil?” That’s how a five-year-old child thinks of his river, as oil.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Becoming a Pipeline Activist

Susan is a busy working mom of two young children, but when the Enbridge oil spill happened right in her community, she could not stand by. Any moment she can after work, after the kids go to bed, she is researching, attending meetings, preparing speeches, getting interviewed by the media and encouraging others in her community to speak up.

Susan came to Washington DC in October 2011 to testify at the Keystone XL hearings about the impact of a tar sands oil spill on a community. She described what it did to her home town of Marshall, Michigan. Houses that were near the river were purchased, but home owners a little farther on were left without compensation, and in a half-empty community. This created tension in a small community.

There are a lot of people who have had settlement agreements with the oil companies, so they can’t speak. It’s pretty much a gag order that once you settle, you can’t say anything. A lot of people with their health are tied up in lawsuits, so of course they can’t speak because of their current litigation. So I have no lawsuits, I’m not going to sue anyone. But I care about the environment. I care about the people. And you just need someone to be able to communicate for everyone, but not be accusatory and not be threatening.

There are events in our lives that change everything. There are moments when we know we must step up because we are the right person in the right time. Certainly Susan would wish that there had never been an oil spill that filled her local stream and river with thick tar sands oil. But she made a choice in how she responded – a courageous choice.

She continues to collaborate with people in her community and the National Wildlife Federation in the hopes of bringing good from this terrible event, whether that means standing up against the Keystone XL pipeline, or helping other communities maintain their pipelines better. This month she attended a conference about pipeline safety, one of the only attendees who was not from government or the pipeline industry. As Susan says:

I’m doing this now because my children were harmed. My children were hurt, and we’ve been dismissed… And because of that I’m not going to go away, and I’m not going to stop.

Show Your Support

If you’d like to send best wishes to Susan, please comment on this blog post, tweet about it or like it on Facebook.

Suggested Tweet – Courageous mom stands up for her children & community after oil spill http://bit.ly/v1AsMh via @nwf

Another way to show your support is to donate to National Wildlife Federation’s work on to stop dirty fuels and the Keystone XL pipeline at our Choose Your Cause website.

Environmentalists are relieved to hear that the Obama administration has delayed the decision regarding the Keystone XL pipeline.

But most Americans probably do not know that pipelines already criss-cross our neighborhoods and countryside.

For Susan Connolly of Michigan, pipelines were not a concern before July 26, 2010. That was the day a pipeline burst near her town, spilling oil in the Kalamazoo River.

Here she re-counts what it was like that day and how the river looks today. Thank you to Michelle Barlond Smith for sharing her photos.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The first night, my son was throwing up. Within a few days, my daughter had a strange rash on her body. A lot of the kids had headaches. There were nose bleeds, migraines, sore throat. Since the kids were younger, it hit them fast…

You could see the oil-covered geese, the deer. People were pulling muskrat, turtles. Another response that they did other than just capture the animals, for weeks you could hear guns being fired, just killing all the deer because they couldn’t rehabilitate them. So you heard that for weeks, day and night…

The entire Kalamazoo River, the whole 40 mile stretch, still needs moderate to heavy work done still. There’s a no contact order that you can’t go anywhere near the river.

Hear more of Susan’s story, such as why she speaks up for those affected by the spill, in an upcoming blog.

Support National Wildlife Federation’s work on to stop dirty fuels and the Keystone XL pipeline at our Choose Your Cause website.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Why would the proposed pipeline so terrible?

• Pipeline giant TransCanada has sent letters to American landowners threatening to confiscate their property by eminent domain - even before President Obama makes a final decision
• Tar sands would increase climate pollution at at time when global warming is already fueling 2011′s extreme weather
• The Keystone XL pipeline would leave people and wildlife along the pipeline route at risk of a tar sands spill
• The pipeline would kill jobs and raise gas prices in the Midwest

How can you help stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline?

• If you’re in the DC area, sign up to join Sunday’s massive rally to encircle the White House.
• If you can’t make the DC rally, please take a moment right now to  ask President Obama to say no to tar sands.

I’ll be at the White House on Sunday. Hope to see you there!

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, via State Dept.

Emerging from talks with Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird late this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton indicated that the State Department is getting ready to approve the dirtiest, largest pipeline ever to be built in the U.S. The diplomatic-speak whereby Mr. Baird said he wanted a fast decision, while Mrs. Clinton said they had agreed to some safety enhancements seemed to signal the permit process is drawing to a close.

NWF senior vice president Jeremy Symons said, “The Canadian government seems to have more say in this dirty tar sands pipeline decision than the Americans who are at put at risk by this pipeline. The State Department hasn’t allowed the U.S. citizens who oppose the pipeline to talk to Sec. Clinton, but the Canadian government appears to have unlimited access on behalf of their oil companies.”

The news comes as long sought after reforms to improve pipeline safety seems to be moving forward in Congress.  A rash of major spills and explosions may be responsible for some rare bipartisan agreement on the failings of the current safety laws and regulations in place.

Pipeline Safety Bill Advances in Congress

It took several serious ruptures, contamination and evacuations, but finally, Congress is moving to tighten up on pipeline safety.  Over two million miles of oil and gas pipelines crisscross the country, many of them unseen underground.  Pipeline breaks have dumped spills into the Yellowstone and Kalamazoo Rivers and in Alaska and in San Bruno, California, for example.

via NWF

One bill would require gas line operators to document their maximum allowable operating pressures, a key factor in the San Bruno accident.  The bills include tougher requirements for pipelines crossing waterways to address some of the weaknesses that led to the Yellowstone River spill and generally the bills would strengthen the mapping of pipelines and the notification of accidents to state and local governments and emergency responders.  One bill would require records of all inspections.  They would increase penalties for safety violations.

The House bill was crafted in a rare bipartisan negotiation between Reps. Fred Upton (R-MI) and John Dingell (D-MI), which stands as a good symbol of how Congress should work.  After all, environmental protection shouldn’t be a partisan or ideological issue.

It’s nice to have some good news from the Congress.  These bills would give millions of Americans more assurance that their water supplies and property will not be harmed by an oil or gas spill from a broken pipeline. They will push the Department of Transportation to beef up enforcement sand spur improvements in technology and training that could stop leaks from occurring and attenuate the damage if they do.

Keystone XL Project Would Harm Energy Security

The bill stands in contrast to recently approved House legislation perversely called the “North American-Made Energy Security Act” that requires the Obama administration to expedite its decision-making on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.  As we’ve said before, if approved Keystone XL will carry one of the dirtiest, highest polluting fuels ever through the Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico for export.

CC Chapman/Flickr

Mr. Baird and other supporters have provided no guarantees the energy would be used in America.  If anything, the industry has issued documents suggesting they want to move supply away from Americans and to ports that would ship the heavy crude to places like China and India.  The result: higher gas prices for many Americans.

The bill amounts to an unnecessary, ill-conceived ploy that could force a precipitous decision without solid facts.

NWF Pushes for a Stronger Bill

Groups like the National Wildlife Federation are working to see that the final pipeline safety bill requires studies to determine the full impacts of transporting tar sands oil through pipelines – even when a spill occurs.  Once those studies are done, appropriate regulations are needed to ensure that pipelines are built to withstand the corrosive and unstable nature of tar sands sludge and oil. Until a thorough study of this product is done and until proper regulations are in place, Congress should not be jamming through the legislative process a bill to force a premature, ill-informed decision on questionable polluter projects like Keystone XL.

A pipeline spill could ravage the heartland's agriculture sector and economy while pummeling important wildlife habitat.

Pipelines have been spilling regularly across the U.S., but those spills could be small peanuts compared to a true disaster that might occur from building the proposed and highly controversial tar sludge pipeline known as Keystone XL.

A report released today and spearheaded by a Nebraska academic says the potential frequency and magnitude of oil spills from the tar sands oil project, as well as the consequences of worst-case spills into the Yellowstone, Missouri and Platte Rivers and atop the Ogallala Aquifer, are far worse than the Canadians are letting on to U.S. regulators tasked with approving the dubious project.

According to a news story from the Lincoln Journal Star:

A worst-case scenario spill from the proposed Keystone XL pipeline into the Platte River in Nebraska would  form a plume of oil that could extend more than 450 miles, contaminating drinking water for people as far away as Kansas City, MO and threatening wildlife habitat, according to an independent analysis of the project released Monday.

The study by John Stansbury, a professor of water resources engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, also said a worst-case spill in the Sand Hills region of Nebraska could pollute 4.9 billion gallons of groundwater with a plume of contaminants 40 feet thick, 500 feet wide and 15 miles long.

“This plume, and other contaminant plumes from the spill, would pose serious health risks to people using that groundwater for drinking water and irrigation,” Stansbury said in the report.

In comparison to the nasty 42,000 gallon spill by Exxon last week into Montana’s Yellowstone River, a major spill from the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline into the Platte River in Nebraska could leak 5.9 million gallons of toxic, corrosive tar sands oil and spread pollutants such as carcinogenic benzene in excess of federal health standards hundreds of miles downstream, contaminating drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people as far south as Kansas City, MO.

A scene from the recent and deadly Enbridge pipeline disaster. It would be relatively small peanuts compared to a worst-case Keystone XL spill.

Can we trust the oil giants and regulators to do the right thing?  Not really, says the author.

He led an independent analysis of worst-case spill scenarios for four locations along the proposed Keystone XL pipeline route through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. He found that the pipeline’s operator, TransCanada Corp., made significant flawed and inappropriate assumptions about the frequency and severity of expected spills from its pipelines.

Although the federal Clean Water Act requires pipeline builders to analyze and make public worst-case spill scenarios and resulting environmental impacts for their projects before beginning operation, TransCanada has yet to adequately do so for the Keystone XL, and the pipeline could be approved before regulators see the conclusions.

We’re not kidding when we say Keystone XL is the next great oil disaster in waiting, on par with BP’s Gulf spill last year.  But this is a tragedy we can stop. You can help.  TAKE ACTION and tell the Obama Administration to reject Keystone XL.

NWF and others are warning Sec. Clinton not to approve a dangerous tar sands pipeline

Over 260,000 Americans wrote to the State Department in opposition to the controversial pipeline.  State is in charge of permitting the pipeline because it crosses an international border.

Read the EPA’s official comments on the supplemental impact statement for TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL Project.

Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard, Deepwater Horizon response.

If there is one lesson we should have learned over the year-to-the-day since the BP disaster in the Gulf, it’s that oil companies cannot be trusted on safety and the U.S. government cannot be trusted to hold them accountable.

So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the State Department’s follow-up environmental assessment for TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, released last Friday, is about as inadequate as the first one.

Even though the new assessment found that tar sands are much more polluting than other forms of oil used in the U.S., the State Department still came to the same conclusion as in the first assessment that the project would result in limited environmental impacts. Something isn’t adding up.

The new assessment attempts to appease the concerns of landowners, farmers, local elected officials, members of Congress, consulting federal agencies, environmental groups, and others. But the State Department merely adds a lot of ink without actually addressing the concerns.

I’d hazard to guess that this is because addressing these concerns adequately would take more time and the State Department wants this off their desks so they can stop dealing with TransCanada and others pressuring them to rubber stamp the project.

An editorial that ran in the Nebraska Lincoln Journal Star today got it right:

“The draft supplemental environmental impact statement released last week by the State Department on the Keystone XL Pipeline is a superficial affirmation of its earlier work…In fact, the statement occasionally seems more concerned about TransCanada’s profit margin than Nebraska’s natural resources.”

Although the new assessment has many inadequacies, the two sections that probably deserved the most attention – pipeline route and pipeline safety – still fell far short.

Pipeline Route

Nebraska Senators Nelson and Johanns, local elected officials, landowners, and farmers have repeatedly asked for an assessment of alternative routes for the pipeline to avoid the Nebraska Sandhills region where the Ogallala Aquifer saturates the sandy soil at the surface. These stakeholders worry about a pipeline spill contaminating this precious source of drinking water for two million people and irrigation for much of America’s breadbasket.

Senator Johanns has even said that there couldn’t be a worse route through Nebraska and maybe the entire country. Instead of the heeding these words of caution and assessing reasonable alternative routes, the State Department said avoidance of the Sandhills wasn’t a good enough reason to look at alternatives, then took a cursory look at some unreasonable alternatives and dismissed them.

Aerial shot of Alberta tar sands taken during NWF flyover

Pipeline Safety

There is considerable evidence that tar sands pipelines pose serious safety risks, which haven’t been assessed by the industry or the regulators. Raw tar sands crude oil is thicker and more corrosive than conventional crude oil, so it has to be mixed with liquid natural gas, then pumped at high pressures and temperatures to make it flow through a pipeline. A tar sands pipeline spilled nearly one million gallons into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River last year. Some of the thick oil is still at the bottom of the river.

The State Department should have allowed the Pipeline Safety Administration the time to do an assessment of these risks. If the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline gets built without this, it will be a dangerous experiment.

Does any of this sound familiar?

The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling concluded:

“Regulators, however, failed to keep pace with the industrial expansion and new technology–often because of industry’s resistance to more effective oversight. The result was a serious, and ultimately inexcusable, shortfall in supervision of offshore drilling that played out in the Macondo well blowout and the catastrophic oil spill that followed.”

The State Department should pay attention to the lessons of the BP oil disaster so that Secretary Clinton doesn’t give a thumbs up to the next oil disaster. It would be a shame if this dangerous and unnecessary project came to be known as Hillary Clinton’s Pipeline.

Take action to stop this tar sands pipeline by clicking here.