Quote:
Originally Posted by dobbles
Is the narrative I have been given as just a normal non energy savvy American that far off base? Are all the other pipelines that US has built been just as potentially damaging as Keystone? Was there not another route they could have proposed for the pipeline that would have been less impactful?
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You have to understand the timeline to see why the narrative was political.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/timel...line-1.5877117
This timeline will give you an idea, but the opposition has been truly more about 'oil bad' based on public outcry that built up then it is about the environmental impacts for this particular pipeline (which has been stated on 3 different times by the US state department that XL was safe with low environmental impact and safer then rail during Obama's tenure), and has been politicized by the Democrats in recent years as a battle against climate change.
As you will note, the main pipeline already exists and already runs through Nebraska. Canada already exports oil sands products through pipelines in the US. The original pipeline was approved by George W Bush in his final year in 2008 with a presidential permit. At the time, it was not a political issue and the Democrats did not retroactively remove this permit once Obama took office. It was considered a non-issue at the time, this pipeline went through with zero fanfare. You can do a search of Obama and Keystone and not find a single article around his first inauguration. Heck there isn't any news at all on the original pipeline.
https://www.google.com/search?q=keys...3A2009&tbm=nws
https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/prs...mar/102254.htm
Then, as you may well know, the Deep Horizon oil spill occurred in 2010 with severe environmental consequences in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwa...izon_explosion
This is where the tides of politics really shifted. Keystone XL became the symbolic battleground in late 2010 to draw the line in the sand as it was in the process of being approved and was an easy target. This is also around this time that fracking became widespread as a new oil extraction method, and notably the Bakken Formation development boomed in North Dakota. Shale oil is much lighter then oil sands, but refineries need heavier products to run optimally, as such the need for a heavier product like WCS is still there. Around this time, we started seeing devoted campaigns against tar sands. The shift against Canadian based oil was on in full swing (even though Canada has shale oil as well as a large percentage of its oil exports), and we are now where we are today.
There's nothing special or ultimately different about Keystone XL, it's simply a pipeline that became symbolic. It was rejected on purely political grounds after political pressure from the Democrat base.
The main fear seems to be, oil leaking into water supplies, which is obviously a valid concern, but one of which the likelihood is extremely low with minimal impact in the unlikelihood it occurs.
Pipelines are extremely safe, and much safer then rail travel (you don't want to know how common derailments truly are). And Canadians should know full well about the Lac Megantic disaster.
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia....-rail-disaster
Oil sands still travels in existing pipelines. Oil sands still travels by rail. You just remove a safe and low emission method of transport. Opposing the pipeline does not prevent oil sands from being extracted. It just makes the transport of oil less safe and more costly.