Photo: Bold Nebraska

Crude Behavior: TransCanada, Enbridge, and the Tar Sands Industry’s Tarnished Legacy, a new report from NWF, details the recent history of those companies, including underhanded legal campaigns against landowners, a systematic disregard for the rights of Native American tribes, and negligent behavior that has led to significant tar sands spills in the US and Canada. As the industry plans to build thousands of miles of new or re-purposed tar sands pipelines across the country, the public and government officials need to learn what it actually means to invite in these neighbors. As the report makes clear, you shouldn’t unroll the welcome mat.

In the Great Plains, TransCanada (of Keystone XL infamy) has mounted a widespread misinformation assault, threatening lawsuits when farmers refuse to sign over their land to the company. In Texas, landowners and journalists have been threatened with arrest for “trespassing” as TransCanada bulldozes its way to the Gulf coast. In New England, tar sands companies continue to insist, against all the evidence, that they have no plans to bring their dirty fuel through Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine — while simultaneously sponsoring tar sands spill cleanup workshops. And in the Midwest, Enbridge Inc. is plowing ahead with a massive expansion plan despite the lingering effects of the biggest inland oil spill in US history, the 2010 Kalamazoo River disaster.

Click here to read Crude Behavior, the new report from National Wildlife Federation.

As Jeff Insko — a Michigander who has been fighting back against these companies — puts it: “We’ve experienced first-hand the enormous gulf between Enbridge’s ‘good neighbor’ rhetoric and their callous treatment of landowners.”

Whether by looking for back-room deals in Washington, DC or taking ranchers to court, TransCanada, Enbridge and the other players have rewritten the book on how to do bad business in pursuit of profits. NWF has already detailed how tar sands is a terrible bet for wildlife, our climate, the American economy and public health, and Crude Behavior is another chapter in the sordid story of this industry. You can help stop the abuse: make sure to take action at the link below and visit NWF.org/tarsands for more information.

Speak up for people and wildlife! Tell the White House to say NO to Keystone XL and other tar sands pipelines.

A map showing how oil companies are planning to move tar sands through New England for export.

While the approval only covers light crude, it is believed Enbridge could easily obtain future permission to move tar sands east.

“Canada is desperate for avenues to move tar sands to market, and once a pathway for oil to move from Western Canada into New England is opened up, it is only a matter of time it used to carry tar sands,” says National Wildlife Federation senior attorney Jim Murphy, who is based in Vermont.

Conservation groups are warning New Englanders that Enbridge is attempting to get approval incrementally to avoid attention. It’s part of their sneaky new playbook. Their goal is to pipe corrosive, high-carbon tar sands oil through environmentally important areas of New England. Enbridge has an awful record of spilling more than 800 times since 1999.

Learn more about this proposal and the risks to waterways and wildlife here.

Deny Deny Deny

A 2011 Keystone XL protest outside the White House gates got the attention of top White House officials and helped derail the Keystone XL project, at least for now. The industry is adapting to avoid another Keystone controversy. Image from treehugger.com.

Their departing CEO, Patrick Daniel, showed no remorse and gave no apologies for one of the biggest fossil fuel disasters in North American history. Instead, he sounded frustrated last week, saying he wished the tar sands pipeline business hadn’t become so controversial. Good riddance Mr. Daniel.

Last spring, his company announced a plan to reverse the direction of a pipeline called line 9, so that it could carry crude east rather than west. No big deal, right? What Enbridge didn’t do was show all its cards. The real plan is to send dirty tar sands oil across several Great Lakes and New England states to Portland, Maine, for transfer by ship to refineries or for export. The project, called Trailbreaker, was floated two years ago, and then abandoned when the recession set in.

When local groups in New England announced opposition a few weeks back to piping tar sands near precious rivers in the area, Enbridge reached up its sleeve for the denial card. A spokesman for Enbridge told the Associated Press, “We have been absolutely clear on the fact that the company is not pursuing the Trailbreaker Project.”

That’s not credible. As NWFs Curtis Fisher retorted in the AP article, Enbridge denied it was looking at reversing Line 9, until they went ahead and announced they wanted to reverse Line 9. In fact, the company is salivating at the prospect of moving (by their 2008 estimate) 150,000 barrels of tar sludge a day to Portland.

“We’re pretty excited about [Trailbreaker],” an oil executive said in a 2008 presentation,”because it provides capacity on an as-needed basis, and it involves existing assets so it can be completed at low cost and on a quick turnaround.”

So what’s the truth? Enbridge appears to be playing a dangerous game of denial, putting the pieces in place for a tar sands route to New England, while denying the once and future Trailbreaker (or something by a different name) is happening. Elephant in the room, what elephant?

Divide and Conquer

Meanwhile, another pipeline giant, TransCanada, has split the 2,000 mile Keystone XL into two, in an attempt to move the project piecemeal and shrink the scope of the State Department’s environmental review. Wildlife Promise recently referred to this as divide and conquer:

[A]after Keystone XL was rejected the first time, TransCanada decided to split off the “Gulf Coast segment” of the pipeline, which stretches through Oklahoma and Texas, as a stand-alone project. Because this route doesn’t cross the US border, it avoided the need for the Presidential Permit and the review it entails.

That particular tactic paid off for TransCanada last month, as the Army Corps of engineers  gave a green light to construction of XL in Oklahoma and Texas. The oil execs at TransCanada probably had some high-fives last month as well when the State Department announced its new environmental review will ignore the southern segment of Keystone XL.

[Click here to take action and stop latest attempt to resurrect Keystone XL.]

Must History Repeat?

In the summer of 2010, over a million gallons of tar sands oil spilled when an Enbridge  pipeline ruptured near Marshall, Michigan, contaminating  the Kalamazoo River. Families were driven from their homes and wildlife suffered and died. Responding to the spill, Michigan Congressman Fred Upton said, “Each and every one of us is all too familiar with the devastation wrought by the BP Gulf disaster and now we have a nightmare here in our own backyard. The mistakes and missteps that sabotaged the response and cleanup in the Gulf cannot happen here in southwest Michigan.”

A wonderful sentiment to ride out the news cycle, but Rep.Upton went on to champion Keystone XL, even as the mess persisted in his back yard.

The Environmental Protection Agency ordered Enbridge to clean up the mess, but it is still not cleaned up. Workers are still struggling to remove residual crude oil and are increasingly resigned to the possibility that it may never be cleaned. According EPA’s website, after the spill 39 miles of the river system were closed to public access. By April 17, 2012, three miles–three—had been reopened. Other segments may reopen this year, says EPA, if it is safe.

Accidents in the Trailbreaker pipeline may be more likely because it’s so old. One section is 52 years old, and other large section dates to 1975. A spill from this pipeline could sully rivers, lakes and bays. At risk would be cherished places like Lake Ontario, the Saint Lawrence River, the Connecticut River, the Androscoggin River, Sebago Lake and Casco Bay.

Can We Afford to Trust Enbridge?

A 2007 Enbridge pipeline explosion in Minnesota, pictured here, killed two and spewed oil, fire and smoke into surrounding communities.

Just recently, we learned from media reports that Enbridge has under-estimated the risk of a tar sands spill along its Northern Gateway Project across western Canada, basically ignoring their dismal record in Michigan.

A former insurance CEO, Robyn Allan, concluded that Enbridge does not have “adequate insurance coverage or the corporate structure to cover a multi-billion dollar spill,” reported Andrew Nikiforuk in The Tyee.

‘There is no reason to believe Enbridge would be directly responsible for the cost of any spill based on the limited partnership structure. This structure allows profits to flow to Enbridge, but from what I have seen in the documents, not spill liabilities,’ explains Allan.”

Allan also suggested that Enbridge only minimally understands how the heavy crude oil behaves. It usually sinks to the bottom of a river and is harder to clean up than other fuels.

Allan added that the “company suffers from a corporate culture that places growth as priority above operational safety.”  That offers little reassurance to New Englanders. That was made evident when media recently reported that even as the Kalamazoo spill was happening, Enbridge employees, hundreds of miles away had one priority: get the oil flowing. Rather than check for a spill, they attempted to restart the pipeline, not once, but twice.

If Enbridge’s misadventures weren’t so heartbreaking it would be hilarious. Maybe we should call it “Heartbreaker,” not “Trailbreaker.”

[Note: special thanks to NWFs Peter LaFontaine for advice and editing in drafting this post.]

The latest example is in the Gulf Coast. After plans for building its massive 1,700 mile Keystone XL tar sands pipeline were denied, TransCanada came up with a new plan: divide the pipeline. So far, the plan seems to be working. Why? Because without comprehensive regulation of tar sands crude—which is dirtier, more corrosive, harder to clean up, and more harmful when spilled than conventional oil—Big Oil is betting they can escape meaningful review by quietly constructing these pipelines segment by segment. So far, the strategy seems to be paying off.

Tar sands pipelines sometimes seem like the Hydra of Greek mythology: cut off one head and two more grow in its place.

Big Oil’s Dash for the Border

Tar sands oil is pretty nasty stuff and needs to be diluted with natural gas condensates just to make it flow. But despite the fact that this hot sludge is corrosive and dangerous, the government treats tar sands pipelines just like pipelines carrying regular crude oil—meaning, they’re not regulated well at all.

I’m about to get a little wonky but stick with me here for a minute: Trans-boundary pipelines are reviewed by the U.S. State Department to determine if they are in the “national interest” and whether they should be issued a Presidential Permit. It was the need for a Presidential Permit for the Keystone XL pipeline that triggered a public review, and ultimately led to the denial of the original proposal.

Domestic pipelines, however, escape this Presidential Permit process. So after Keystone XL was rejected the first time, TransCanada decided to split off the “Gulf Coast segment” of the pipeline, which stretches through Oklahoma and Texas, as a stand-alone project. Because this route doesn’t cross the US border, it avoided the need for the Presidential Permit and the review it entails. But TransCanada still had to get permits for the approximately 900 streams, wetlands, and other waters the pipeline would cross for this segment. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issues these permits.

Fortunately for TransCanada, the Army Corps process is quite friendly to the industry: in fact, Corps regulations for pipeline permitting contradict the Clean Water Act’s mandate that a project’s cumulative impacts be assessed. The Corps lets pipelines be permitted under a “Nationwide Permit,” allowing them to be built with no public input—even from directly impacted landowners—and a minimum level of environmental review. Ignoring the legal mandate to assess cumulative impacts, Corps regulations permit each separate crossing to be considered as an independent project separate from the rest. In other words, to avoid looking at the impacts of one single pipeline project disturbing 900 water bodies in Texas and Oklahoma, the Corps pretends there are 900 separate projects, each one unrelated to the next.

Spotted outside the US Army Corps office? (Photo: Zen Sutherland)

A Threat to New England

Big Oil is using a similar tactic to attempt to ship tar sands east as well. Rather than overtly revive a stalled 2008 plan to pump tar sands oil to to Portland, ME, the industry is cutting the project into segments. Without admitting their intentions, Enbridge Inc. is separately pursuing almost all of the various reversals and upgrades needed to bring tar sands to the East Coast. If the company name sounds familiar, that’s because Enbridge was responsible for the devastating Kalamazoo River tar sands oil spill in Michigan in 2010. Their current plans include expanding the same Michigan pipeline and reversing the flow of two other pipelines in the US and Canada. It is almost certain Enbridge’s hope is to have most of the project in place before any serious review takes place or public opposition builds.

The risks of tar sands to our climate, health, wildlife, and natural resources are enormous and becoming more alarming by the day, and building these pipelines without meaningful review is unconscionable. Comprehensive review and tough regulation of tar sands infrastructure is needed now. Otherwise, a dirty energy future will be piecemealed together for us.

Speak up for wildlife and communities in Big Oil’s path — tell the State Department not to rubber stamp Keystone XL and other dangerous tar sands projects!

A Great Blue Heron coated in tar sands oil in Enbridge's Kalamazoo River spill (photo: Michigan Department of Environmental Quality)

Alberta’s Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Resource Development said the recent spills are not necessarily cause for alarm, noting they happened in different parts of the province.

The pipeline agency chimed in, saying it’s “confident its regulations are protective of public safety.” Nothing to see here, folks, just another friendly neighborhood Hazmat team trying to clean up toxic material in your rivers and farms!

Enbridge is doing its best to keep these accidents out of the spotlight:

[Enbridge] said as soon as it detected the leak, it notified civic authorities and other regulatory agencies. But Steve Upham, reeve [sheriff] of the County of St. Paul, where the pumping station is located, said as of Tuesday night he hadn’t received any notification. Upham said he was aware of the spill only through media reports.

“I don’t think anybody in the county, at this point, has been notified,” he said. Asked if he should have been contacted by Enbridge, Upham said: “I would have thought so. Or Alberta Environment, because they would be notified, I think. We’ve heard nothing from anybody.”

Industry Profits Despite System-Wide Failures

Sean Kheraj, an assistant professor at York University in Toronto, calculates that the oil and gas industry spilled over 7.3 million gallons in Alberta alone between 2006-2010. Since then, several major incidents have upped that number significantly, including a 1.1 million-gallon spill near Little Buffalo and two ruptures earlier this summer that totaled at least a quarter million gallons. In fact, a spokesman for Alberta’s energy regulator admits that the province’s pipelines averaged two failures per day in 2010.

But Enbridge has done well financially despite its inability to keep oil out of our environment; the company reported a 31% rise in revenue earlier this year. And it seeks an even bigger expansion in the near future, with plans to stretch its tar sands pipeline system to both coasts and covert intentions to send the corrosive sludge through New England. A tar sands spill in Vermont, New Hampshire, or Maine could spell catastrophe for the northeast’s drinking water and wildlife habitat, and the threat has led groups like NWF to organize citizens against these proposals.

Meanwhile, other tar sands backers like TransCanada and the Koch brothers are leaning on their friends in Congress to speed up the pace of pipeline construction in the United States. More pipelines means more spills and more destruction of the Canadian boreal forest, but with hundreds of billions—even trillions—of dollars at stake, it’s no wonder that Big Oil is pushing these projects even in the face of system-wide trouble.

We need your help to protect wildlife at risk from oil spills and habitat loss in Alberta and across the continent! Speak up now to stop the spread of dangerous tar sands oil.

National Wildlife Federation along with Vermont Natural Resource Council, CLF, Sierra Club and VPRIG held a press conference in Montpelier, VT, concerning a proposed project allowing a 61 year old pipeline to carry tar sands from Montreal through Vermont and New Hampshire to Portland, Maine.

Enbridge Energy’s environmental record is far from perfect—Enbridge is the same pipeline company that leaked approximately 1,000,000 gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo River near Marshall, Michigan in 2010.

“This really ancient pipeline has already spilled, including a spill 35 years ago that fouled Lake Memphemagog,” said Curtis Fisher of National Wildlife Federation. “The pipeline cuts across the Missisquoi, Black, Moose, and Connecticut Rivers, which all are critical wildlife habitats and attract a large number of tourists. Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom is known for being the state’s most pristine area. Vermonters do not want to risk our beloved natural resources to help dirty oil companies make billions and dramatically increase climate change.”

A broad coalition of organizations are defying plans from the Canadian oil pipeline company Enbridge Energy to build their “Trailbreaker” pipeline. These groups are stressing that the pipeline plan is unsafe and that a tar sands oil spill would harm Vermont’s waterways, wildlife and tourism economy.

“Vermont is pursuing a clean energy future in large part because Vermonters know that we depend on cold weather industries like skiing, and sugaring,” said Sandra Levine of Conservation Law Foundation. “Tar sands are a carbon bomb that will catapult us past several dangerous climate tipping points. It has no part in Vermont’s clean energy future.”

Tar Sands Too Risky

The proposed pipeline reversal scheme commonly referred to as “Trailbreaker” would reverse the flow of oil through an existing pipeline and would bring tar sands oil through Ontario, Quebec, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. A new NRDC report explains that unlike the conventional crude oil that currently flows through the pipeline, tar sands is far more corrosive, is more likely to spill, and much harder to clean up when it does spill.

“This pipeline plan puts Vermont’s rivers, lakes and streams in jeopardy and provides no benefits. The company behind it is responsible for the largest tar sands oil spill in U.S. history, which they still haven’t cleaned up,” said Johanna Miller of Vermont Natural Resources Council. “Oil giants don’t call the shots in here in Vermont and they can’t be allowed to put our state’s natural treasures in jeopardy.”

The tar sands industry has been in a desperate search for a port of export since the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway projects have become mired in controversy. The growing expansion of tar sands pipelines eastward raises concerns about the climate implications of a tar sands expansion to Central Canada and the U.S. Northeast. The U.S. Congressional Research Service recently released a report confirming tar sands as the most carbon-heavy oil on the planet (PDF), representing a significant increase in greenhouse gases from typical petroleums.

“Tar sands oil is like hot liquid sandpaper that corrodes pipelines, creating a greater risk of devastating oil spills along the route,” said Danielle Droitsch, NRDC Senior Attorney. “We cannot afford to blindly accept the climate and environmental dangers that come packed with ever-increasing amounts of tar sands being shoved south of the border. Trailbreaker isn’t alone—it is part of a stealth invasion of the U.S. from Canada’s dirty oil—it puts Central Canada and the Northeast squarely on the front lines.”

Click here to help protect Northeastern wildlife from dirty tar sands oil.

In 2008, when they thought no one was watching, oil companies Enbridge and the Portland Montreal Pipeline Company hatched a plan to reverse the flow of two existing pipelines to send dirty tar sands crude through Ontario, Quebec, and into Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine for refining along the East Coast and Gulf Coast and export abroad. The plan would have exposed American treasures to the risks of a tar sands oil spill. These include Sebago Lake, which supplies Portland, Maine with its drinking water; the Connecticut River, New England’s largest; the Misissiquoi River, historically valuable to tribes and tributary of Lake Champlain; and other critical resources. It also would have provided another fuse to set off the tar sands carbon bomb by giving this land-locked resource access to markets abroad and in the U.S.

To learn more about the threat of tar sands to New England, see this fact sheet.

In 2009 the plan was shelved due to the poor economy. Now it’s back. And Big Oil won’t tell you about it.

That’s because Canada’s dirty secret has gotten out. Tar sands are an environmental disaster. As James Hansen put it, tar sands are a climate bomb that would add 120 parts per million of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, enough to catapult us past a host of dangerous climate tipping points. Tar sands development is also turning North America’s bird nursery into a toxic waste zone, leading to the decline of caribou in Alberta, and responsible for a tragic and misguided plan to kill thousands of wolves to “protect” caribou instead of forcing Big Oil to stop destroying caribou habitat.

And then there is the risk of spills. When Line 6B ruptured in Michigan in July of 2010, 1.2 million gallons of oil–enough oil to cover over three acres of land with a foot of oil–spilled into the Kalamazoo River. The cost of clean-up has been 18 times per liter as that of already expensive conventional oil spills, while sticky tar sands still coats portions of the river’s bottom and the spill has left many residents sick.

Now that they are being watched, Big Oil wants to hide the ball. But their plans to bring tar sands to New England are becoming increasingly clear.

First, in summer of 2011, Enbridge announced plans to partially reverse the flow of Line 9, the first of the two pipelines in the original “Trailbreaker” proposal. Last week, before Canadian hearings on the partial reversal have even occurred, Enbridge announced a plan to fully reverse the flow of the Line 9 pipeline all the way to Montreal. And Enbridge finally conceded that diluted bitumen (the especially corrosive form of tar sands) was slated to be transported through Line 9. Assuming Canadian officials increasingly beholden to Big Oil will rubberstamp these plans, Enbridge is now one step away–reserving the flow of the Portland-Montreal pipeline–from bringing tar sands to New England.

New England can’t afford to have Big Oil’s attempt to sneak tar sands through the region succeed. In July, New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Provincial Premiers are meeting in Burlington, Vermont. Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin is hosting. Governor Shumlin has been a true leader on energy issues and climate. He also understands that the Connecticut River cannot become the next Kalamazoo.

In a recent meeting preparing for the July event, Governor Shumlin said,

“I don’t think that we’ve dug deep enough in terms of really having a plan that’s going to enrich us all and make New England and the Northeast provinces the place where we get energy right. We have that opportunity; the planning for that opportunity is in your hands.”

The meeting will focus on a climate change plan endorsed by the Governors and Premiers to reduce greenhouse gases by 10 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2020.

Getting energy right, protecting New England from an environmental calamity like the Kalamazoo spill, and reducing carbon pollution means keeping New England tar sands free and denying tar sands’ companies the market access they crave. At the July meeting, the Governors and Premiers need to discuss the threat of tar sands to New England and set a goal of keeping New England tar sands free.

Governor Shumlin is right, New England has an opportunity to get energy policy right, and that opportunity is in our hands. Big Oil wants to snake tar sands into the Northeast. They are hoping we won’t notice. We can’t afford to let that happen.

Click here to help protect Northeastern wildlife from dirty tar sands oil.

Cleanup crews are still working to repair the damage caused by Enbridge's 2010 spill in Michigan (photo: Mic Stolz)

Enbridge Inc.—which is known for its terrible safety record and is responsible for a massive tar sands spill in the Kalamazoo River in 2010—has asked the National Energy Board in Canada to allow for a partial reversal of its pipeline between Ontario and Montreal to allow oil in that pipeline to flow east. If this reversal is approved, it is highly likely Big Oil will soon seek to move tar sands through a pipeline that now flows west from Portland, ME to Montreal by reversing the flow of that pipeline as well.

Such a reversal, if approved, would open the way for this dangerous fuel, which is much more corrosive, acidic, and harder to clean up in the event of spill than conventional oil, to flow through Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.  The pipeline (called the “Portland to Montreal Pipeline” or PMPL) currently cuts through or borders some of New England’s most important waters, including Sebago Lake, the Connecticut River, and tributaries to Lake Champlain. While its safety record isn’t as abysmal as other companies’, the PMPL has suffered major spills, including one that fouled Lake Memphremagog, and is already much older than the projected lifespan of proposed new tar sands pipelines.

The Portland-Montreal Pipeline cuts through New England on its route to the coast.

But even as we take strides toward reducing global warming pollution, climatologists warn that tar sands are a carbon bomb in the process of being ignited. Because it takes so much energy to produce and refine, fueling cars with tar sands gasoline has about 20 percent more carbon emissions than fueling cars with gasoline from conventional oil. This means the use of tar sands will undermine any efforts in the Northeast to reduce carbon emissions from our transportation sector. Climate change threatens to make Vermont maple syrup and Maine lobsters things of the past. We need to turn to carbon-free sources of fuel now, not move in the opposite direction.

Sebago Lake -- one of Maine's biggest sources of drinking water -- would be put at risk by a tar sands pipeline (photo: Peter Hopper)

Tell Canada’s National Energy Board to stop the Trailbreaker pipeline proposal!

To hear NWF’s Jim Murphy talk about tar sands’ threat to Northeastern states, click here.

Read more about our work to fight back against Big Oil’s tar sands scheme at nwf.org/tarsands.

Brains? Or dirty oil money? Seems like Big Oil lobbyists are hungry for both. (Photo: Daniel Hollister/flickr)

Keystone XL Gulf Coast Segment – TransCanada Corporation

No, you didn’t misread that. If KXL is the zombie pipeline, this project is the severed arm moving on its own accord. The Gulf Coast Segment would be a scaled-down section of the original KXL proposal that begins at Cushing, Oklahoma and ends at oil refineries in Port Arthur, Texas. Because it doesn’t cross an international border, TransCanada is likely to claim it doesn’t need a Presidential Permit, which would mean that Obama doesn’t get to make an executive decision on the merits of the case.

According to landowners in Texas, TransCanada is planning to start digging trenches for the pipeline through their land as early as next month, even though the company hasn’t secured the necessary state and federal permits. Considering how much heat the company has already caught for bullying landowners, you would think they learned their lesson. Apparently not.

Seaway Reversal – Enbridge Inc. and Enterprise Product Partners

Enbridge is another major North American pipeline company whose name you may have heard: they were responsible for last summer’s massive tar sands spill in Michigan’s Kalamazoo River. The Seaway pipeline is already built, and follows a path similar to the KXL Gulf Coast Segment. But right now, the oil flows north from Texas to storage tanks in Cushing, where it eventually reaches Midwestern consumers. Enbridge recently bought 50% of this pipeline and plans to reverse the flow to send oil south from Cushing to the Gulf Coast. News of the change sent a shockwave through the oil markets and increased the cost of West Texas Intermediate crude (which is the benchmark for US oil prices).

Flanagan South – Enbridge Inc.

The Flanagan South pipeline would link Cushing (and the Seaway pipeline) to Enbridge’s existing system near Chicago. The Chicago area is already home to several tar sands refineries and the industry is rolling along even in the face of public resistance.

In case you’re wondering why Cushing, Oklahoma, is so important: the town is a major oil hub supplied in part by the first Keystone tar sands pipeline, built in 2010. Oil reserves there have built up because there aren’t enough pipelines to get Cushing oil to the Gulf Coast for export, and TransCanada’s own documents make it clear why they want to build a link:

“Access to the [U.S. Gulf Coast] via the Keystone XL Pipeline is expected to strengthen Canadian crude oil pricing in PADD II [the Midwestern states] by removing this oversupply. This is expected to increase the price of heavy crude to the equivalent cost of imported crude.” (From TransCanada’s project application to the Canadian government)

Kinder Morgan--like TransCanada and Enbridge--has seen its share of disaster. This 2008 explosion at their terminal in Pasadena, TX was just one of many incidents over the last decade. (Photo: Christopher Ebdon/flickr)

Northern Gateway – Enbridge Inc.

The Northern Gateway project is Canada’s version of Keystone XL, a multi-billion dollar project that’s become a national controversy, due to Enbridge’s nasty track record and their insistence that the pipeline cut across native tribes’ land. In fact, united opposition by First Nations indigenous groups has effectively stalled out the pipeline, which would bring oil west from Alberta’s tar sands to the Pacific port of Kitimat, British Columbia. But Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a major proponent of both the Northern Gateway and Keystone XL, and has made construction a priority for his administration.

Trans Mountain Pipeline – Kinder Morgan Energy Partners

Kinder Morgan is moving forward to significantly expand its Trans Mountain Pipeline, which runs from Edmonton to Vancouver. In addition to the many dangers of tar sands mining and transport, the expansion would also triple the amount of supertanker traffic in Puget Sound, requiring port expansion and dredging which will impact local communities and wildlife. Many Big Oil insiders consider this an easier project than the Northern Gateway pipeline, despite opposition from the public and regional mayors. 

Trailbreaker – Enbridge, Inc.

Trailbreaker is the Northeast’s version of the Seaway project – it would reverse the flow of existing pipelines to send tar sands oil from Ontario to Portland, Maine, via Vermont and New Hampshire. Like Keystone XL, Trailbreaker crosses an international border and would therefore likely require a Presidential permit. While this project would face stiff opposition, the fact that it could transport a quarter million barrels annually makes it worth keeping a wary eye on.

Stay Tuned…

National Wildlife Federation is committed to fighting tar sands and other dirty fuels, and we scored a big win with President Obama’s rejection of the KXL permit. But it’s clear that Big Oil will keep lurching forward with efforts to get their product overseas, so don’t throw away your shovels and baseball bats just yet.

 Urge President Obama to stand strong to protect wildlife against Big Oil.

For more info on tar sands impacts on wildlife and human health, visit www.NWF.org/tarsands