http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/the-platform/article_efe6bcf3-0a9c-52c0-bd6e-e53fa0b83440.html

By the Editorial Board

Within weeks, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is supposed to decide whether to authorize a 1,600-mile expansion of a tar sands crude oil pipeline network across six Midwestern, Western and Southern U.S. states and three Canadian provinces. Alternatively, she could pass the decision on to President Barack Obama.

Neither the president nor the secretary of state should approve the application at this time for any number of reasons, chief among them is the very real danger of catastrophic pipeline failures in crucial locations.

Such events could leave large tracts of Western and Midwestern farm, ranch and recreational land contaminated with toxic wastes and poison surface-river systems and deep natural reservoirs used to irrigate billions of dollars’ worth of crops and supply drinking water to millions of Americans.

BACKGROUND

The expanded pipeline network, owned and operated by a Canadian company called TransCanada, would be able to push 450 million to 550 million gallons of heavy tar sands crude per day from a processing facility northeast of Calgary, Alberta, to refineries and ports on the Gulf of Mexico.

The expansion, called Keystone XL, would interconnect with TransCanada’s Keystone 1 pipeline, which phased into operation in 2010 and early 2011. Keystone 1 stretches 2,151 miles from Alberta to Cushing, Okla. It includes a leg that cuts from west to east across Missouri, dives under the Mississippi River just north of St. Louis, connects on the Illinois side to the Wood River Refinery at Roxana and ends at a storage site at Patoka, Ill.

Bitumen, the petroleum essence of tar sands crude, is a heavy, nearly solid substance that requires dilution with toxic solvents before it can move through pipelines. Even then, high-pressure pumps are required to keep the material moving, and friction of the diluted bitumen against the inner walls of the pipes raises temperatures to 150 degrees or higher.

SAFETY CONCERNS

• At a U.S. House oversight subcommittee hearing in June, Cynthia Quarterman, the head of the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, testified that current integrity standards for oil pipelines do not consider the abrasive effects of tar sands oil. She said no studies of such effects were done before or since the integrity regulations were adopted.

• In 18 of the last 21 years, toxic liquid spills from pipelines in the United States were greater than 4 million gallons per year. Pipeline equipment failures, installation errors and construction defects were the main reason for half of the spills; 42 percent involved crude oil.

• In advance of construction of Keystone 1, TransCanada forecast that it would experience a leak of at least 2,100 gallons no more than once in seven years. Keystone experienced more than a dozen leaks before it had been operating for one year.

Most were relatively small, but a pumping station in Sargent County, N.D., leaked 21,000 gallons in May, sending a geyser of crude oil 60 feet into the air. And even small leaks can have big consequences. As the Post-Dispatch’s Phillip O’Connor reported at the time, a leak of just five gallons in South Dakota in May 2010 required the removal of more than 9,000 gallons of contaminated water and 185 cubic yards of dirt.

• In the summer of 2010, a pipeline near Marshall, Mich., operated by Enbridge Energy spewed 843,000 gallons of tar sands crude into the Kalamazoo River. More than a year later, 35 miles of the river remain closed, and estimates of the costs are at half a billion dollars and rising.

• This summer, an Exxon Mobil pipeline in Montana burst and sent at least 42,000 of regular crude oil into the Yellowstone River. After an initial denial, the company said that the pipeline previously had carried abrasive tar sands crude, raising concerns that corrosion that might have contributed to the failure.

PROCESS CONCERNS

TransCanada and its allies are conducting a muscular PR and lobbying campaign based on inflated claims of job creation and questionable assertions of increased domestic oil security.

A report commissioned by TransCanada projected the equivalent of nearly 120,000 full-time jobs resulting from the Keystone XL project, although more recently, proponents have been using a figure of 20,000. A State Department analysis projected closer to 2,500 jobs per year for two years.

Project boosters also are touting increased American energy security because tar sands crude would come from Canada, not the Middle East or other trouble spots. But recent TransCanada annual reports to stockholders note that more than 80 percent of Keystone’s capacity already is committed under contracts averaging 18 years, and at least one large purchaser, Valero Energy, has suggested to its investors that much of that heavy crude could be refined into diesel and shipped to markets in Central and South America and Europe.

Finally, emails between senior State Department officials and TransCanada lobbyist Paul Elliott suggest the possibility of improper collaboration on the Keystone XL evaluation. Mr. Elliott was a deputy national campaign manager for Ms. Clinton’s 2008 presidential bid.

Far too many questions surround the Keystone XL project to support its claims of safety, economic benefits and increased energy security. That tilts the balance strongly toward the risk side. For Mr. Obama or Ms. Clinton to approve the expansion under these circumstances would be irresponsible.