Oil Sands: Also Getting Questionable Waivers & Destroying the Boreal Forest

[amborin]

Reliance on Oil Sands Grows Despite Environmental Risks

CONKLIN, Alberta — Beneath the subarctic forests of western Canada, deep under the peat bogs and herds of wild caribou, lies the tarry rock that is one of America’s top sources of imported oil.
There is no chance of a rig blowout here, or a deepwater oil spill like the one from the BP well that is now fouling the Gulf of Mexico. But the oil extracted from Canada’s oil sands poses other environmental challenges, like toxic sludge ponds, greenhouse gas emissions and the destruction of boreal forests.
In addition, critics warn that American regulators have waived a longstanding safety standard for the pipelines that deliver the synthetic crude oil from Canada to refineries in the United States and have not required any specific emergency plans to deal with a spill, which even regulators acknowledge is a possibility.

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Most of the biggest production sites are huge mine pits, accompanied by ponds of waste that are so toxic that the companies try to frighten birds away with scarecrows and propane cannons.
Extracting oil from the sands produces far more greenhouse gases than drilling, environmental groups say, and the process requires three barrels of water for every barrel of oil produced because the dirt must be washed out. Already, tailing pools cover 50 square miles of land abutting the Athabasca River.
The mines are also carving gashes in the world’s largest intact forest, which serves as a vital absorber of carbon dioxide and a stopover point for millions of migrating birds.
But environmental groups are unmoved. “Having tar sands in our energy mix is simply inconsistent with the kind of climate and environment promises we’ve heard the Obama administration make,” said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, who works on the issue at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The high-pressure pipelines that transport the oil give rise to separate safety and environmental concerns, which have been spotlighted by local ranchers and other opponents during the current comment period on the State Department’s environmental impact statement for the proposed pipeline expansion.
One big question is whether TransCanada should get waivers to use thinner pipes on Keystone XL than is normally required in the United States.
The Transportation Department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which oversees oil pipelines, gave such waivers to TransCanada for the first two Keystone pipelines. TransCanada says the thinner pipes have been allowed in Canada for decades and pose no extra risk.

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In a report in March on the agency’s broader permitting practices, the Transportation Department’s inspector general found that, in many cases, the agency had failed to check the safety records of permit applicants and had not checked to verify that permit terms were being followed.
Officials of the safety administration did not respond to interview requests. But in written testimony to a House committee in April, the agency’s new administrator, Cynthia L. Quarterman, acknowledged problems and promised to improve. “As you know,” she said, “we inherited a program that suffered from almost a decade of neglect and was seriously adrift.”
Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, said the whole situation was alarmingly reminiscent of the permit waivers that were routinely granted to offshore oil wells, including the BP well leaking in the gulf. “I think it is incumbent on myself as a policy maker to say ‘hold it,’ ” Mr. Tester said.
In another sign of concern among policy makers, on April 29 South Dakota’s Public Utilities Commission rejected TransCanada’s request for an exemption from a state requirement to notify affected landowners about spills of less than five barrels.

The gulf spill haunted local public hearings on the Keystone project last week in Murdo, S.D., and York, Neb.
Some people along the path of the proposed and existing pipelines complained that no one had required TransCanada to produce an emergency plan for a spill, even though the new pipes would traverse pristine territory, including the Ogallala Aquifer, which supplies water to a wide swath of the nation’s breadbasket and where even a small spill could have grave consequences.
Others demanded that thicker steel be used. And some asked how the pipeline would be monitored for wear and tear.
At the York hearing on May 10, Jim Condon, an engineer from Lincoln, Neb., said the amount of oil spewing from the leaking BP well was just a small fraction of what would be passing through the Keystone XL pipeline. “A rupture of the pipeline would be a huge problem,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/business/energy-environment/19sands.html?sq=oil sands&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=all