The First Enviornmental Controversy

In the first days of the Biden administration, there was a controversy involving the construction of The Keystone Pipeline. The expansion of the Keystone XL pipeline, proposed in 2008 by the oil development corporation TC Energy (formerly TransCanada), was planned to easily deliver the dirtiest fossil fuel on the planet to the consumer. An extension of the new Keystone Pipeline Infrastructure of the business that has been running since 2010, the refining of 168 billion barrels of crude oil locked under the Canadian boreal forest will significantly expand capacity. To be exact, 830,000 barrels a day of Alberta tar sands oil will be shipped to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast. There are now some 3 million miles of oil and gas pipelines operating across our country. But your average pipeline wouldn't be Keystone XL, and tar sand oil is not your average crude. President Biden is revoking a crucial cross-border presidential permit needed to complete the contentious Keystone XL pipeline as part of his bold agenda to combat climate change.

A sludgy, oily deposit called tar sands is found underneath the wilds of northern Alberta's boreal forest. These sands contain bitumen, which can be converted into crude, a gooey form of petroleum. The extraction of oil from tar sands is not a small feat, and this entails steep environmental and economic costs. Nevertheless, oil producers ramped up production in the mid-2000s, with gas prices increasing, and found additional ways to transfer their commodity from the isolated tar sands fields of Canada to midwestern and Gulf Coast refineries.

Two segments currently form the Keystone XL expansion. The first, the southern section, is already done and passes between Cushing, Oklahoma, and Port Arthur, Texas. This project's critics say that TC Energy used legal loopholes to force the pipeline forward, winning a U.S. The Army Corps of Engineers is permitting and stopping the U.S. A more comprehensive vetting process by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which needs citizen feedback. The actually disputed 1,209-mile northern leg is the second segment. The pipeline runs from Hardisty, Alberta, through Montana and South Dakota to Steele City, Nebraska. The U.S., after a rigorous, robust study of considerable public commitment, Under President Barack Obama, the State Department refused to give the northern leg of the Keystone XL project the permission needed to construct, maintain, and run the pipeline across the U.S.-Canada border. While President Trump ultimately approved this permit and eliminated this specific hurdle to the development of Keystone XL, the pipeline remains subject to substantial legislative, administrative, and economic obstacles to being operational.

Tar sands oil is heavier, more toxic, and more corrosive than standard crude oil, and this raises the risk that it will spill from a pipeline carrying it. Indeed, one study showed that in Midwestern states, pipelines shipping tar sands oil leaked three times more per mile than the U.S. national average for pipelines carrying traditional crude between 2007 and 2010. TC Energy's initial Keystone Pipeline System has spilled more than a dozen times since it first went into service in 2010, with one event in North Dakota carrying a 60-foot, 21,000-gallon tar sand oil geyser into the air. Most recently, following a leak in North Dakota of potentially over 378,000 gallons, the Keystone tar sands pipeline was partially shut down on October 31, 2019.

Leaks can be hard to track, complicating matters. And it's harder to clean up than standard crude when tar sands oil leaks, so it quickly sinks to the bottom of the waterway. Toxic contaminants are exposed to humans and animals coming into contact with tar sands crude, and wetlands and wetland areas are at particular risk of spills. Keystone XL will cross regions that are important for agriculture and vulnerable to the climate, including hundreds of rivers, lakes, aquifers and bodies of water. One is Nebraska's Ogallala Aquifer, which supplies millions of people with drinking water and 30 percent of the irrigation water in America. For the farms, ranches, and populations that rely on these critical habitats, a spill will be catastrophic.

Just as rough on the cradle of the issue is the tar sands industry. Its mines are a plague on the boreal Canada, where operations dig up and flatten trees to exploit the oil below, killing the habitat of animals and one of the biggest sinks of carbon in the world. They are depleting and polluting freshwater land, creating large hazardous waste ponds, and risking the health and wellbeing of the citizens of the First Nations who live near them. Piles of petroleum coke, a toxic, coal-like by-product, are created by processing the sticky black gunk. What is more, three to four times the carbon emissions of traditional crude production and refining is generated by the entire process of taking the oil out and rendering it available.

Opposition to Keystone XL focuses on the project's devastating environmental implications. The pipeline has faced years of concerted demonstrations along its planned route from environmental advocates and organizations; indigenous communities; religious leaders; and farmers, ranchers, and company owners. A landmark act of civil disobedience outside the White House in August was one such demonstration. The arrest of more than 1,200 protesters occurred in one such demonstration, a landmark act of civil disobedience outside the White House in August 2011. In addition to unions and world leaders, such as the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and former President Jimmy Carter, more than 90 leading scientists and economists have criticized the project. In 2014, over a 30-day public consultation period, over two million submissions demanding rejection of the pipeline were sent to the State Department.

Now it is time to talk about the controversy surrounding the pipeline. By leveraging false statements, political arm-twisting, and big bucks, the oil industry has lobbied hard to have KXL established. Instead, when TC Energy said that the pipeline would generate almost 119,000 jobs, a State Department study concluded that the project would require less than 2,000 two-year construction jobs and that after construction, the number of jobs would remain about 35. Stopping the pipeline. This is an exciting and substantial step towards the end of the project, but to really complete the Keystone XL pipeline, the Biden administration must withdraw other licenses, including the right-of-way permit from the Bureau of Land Management, and plan for the court challenges that will undoubtedly follow.