Stop the Hogs!

House Approves Keystone XL Pipeline, Senate to Vote on Tuesday

[ http://ecowatch.com/2014/11/13/keystone ... c-85909581 ]

Anastasia Pantsios | November 13, 2014 1:07 pm | Comments

Updated Nov. 14 at 3:50 p.m.:

Today, the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives approved the Keystone XL pipeline. The U.S. Senate will vote on the bill on Tuesday. This morning, President Obama strongly suggested that if the Senate also approves the Keystone XL pipeline, the legislation won’t get past his desk. [ http://ecowatch.com/2014/11/14/obama-ke ... line-veto/ ]

Congressional approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, which was on the Republican agenda to push through once they assume control of the Senate next year, could come as early as Tuesday. [ http://ecowatch.com/2014/11/05/gop-fast ... ystone-xl/ ] That’s when a vote has been scheduled on the project by Senate Democratic leaders. The House has a vote scheduled tomorrow, and it is virtually certain to gain approval there. [ . . . ]

A Forest Threatened by Keystone XL

[ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/opini ... egion&_r=1 ]

By ANDREW NIKIFORUK NOV. 17, 2014

CALGARY, Alberta - ENVIRONMENTALISTS typically fret about the prospect of adding monstrous new amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere if the Keystone XL pipeline is approved, and for good reason.

Bitumen, the low-grade petroleum in Canada’s tar sands that would be carried by the pipeline to the United States, emits an estimated 17 percent more greenhouse gases overall than an average barrel of crude refined in America, according to a report earlier this year by the Congressional Research Service. [ http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42537.pdf ]

But for a vast stretch of western Canada’s boreal forest, the fight over extracting bitumen has already been lost. The question is, how much more will we lose?

Since the mining frenzy for this garbage crude took off in 2000, nearly two million acres of this ancient forest have been cleared or degraded, according to Global Forest Watch — a swath more than six times the size of New York City. If Keystone XL and other proposed pipelines are approved and bitumen production grows, much more forest will be lost.

The Senate is expected to vote Tuesday on the long-delayed pipeline. The House approved it last Friday. President Obama has signaled that he would probably veto it. But even if he does, with Republicans set to take control of Congress in January and only two years left in the president’s term, no one thinks that would mean the end of Keystone XL.

Ground zero in this fight is in western Canada, where the forest hugs the northern flowing Athabasca River. The Athabasca deposit is the largest of three bitumen formations in Canada. This tarry mixture of sand, water, clay and bitumen, which the Cree used to heat up to repair leaky canoes, lies under a northern forest of spruce and aspens roughly the size of Florida.

The shallow deposits are scooped up by huge electric shovels and then hauled away in 400-ton-capacity trucks to mills that separate the bitumen from the sand. The waste is then dumped into lakes of polluted sludge. But most of the bitumen lies so deep in the frozen ground that it must be melted with steam and then pumped to the surface for processing. This requires steam injection plants that blast scalding steam into the ground through wells.

Basic mathematics underscores the absurdity of this brute-force enterprise. A study last year found that one unit of energy was required to produce the equivalent of five units of energy from the open-pit mines. For steam-extracted deposits, the ratio was roughly 1 to 3. [ http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130 ... it-bitumen ] As the Canadian economist Jeff Rubin put it several years ago, “when you’re schlepping oil from sand, you’re probably in the bottom of the ninth inning in the hydrocarbon economy.”

MORE:

[ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/opini ... egion&_r=2 ]

Tar sands pipeline politics -- now it's Energy East

[ http://rabble.ca/columnists/2014/11/tar ... nergy-east ]

By Ole Hendrickson | November 25, 2014

In a recent CBC radio interview on the politics show The House, Gary Doer, Canada's ambassador to the United States, discussed Republican gains in the recent U.S. mid-term election. He predicted that a Republican-controlled U.S. Senate will likely vote to endorse the Keystone XL pipeline by amending an energy efficiency bill. Keystone XL, if then also approved by U.S. President Barack Obama, would transport diluted bitumen from the Alberta tar sands south through the U.S. to Gulf Coast refineries and ports.

Both houses of the U.S. Congress did indeed vote on Keystone XL in the past weeks. The motion to endorse got a clear majority in the House of Representatives, but failed by one vote in the Senate (which will not pass into Republican control until the start of the new year). Meanwhile, Canada's taxpayer-funded lobbyists in Washington (Ambassador Doer and his staff at the embassy) are continuing their efforts to arm-twist U.S. legislators.

In his interview, Mr. Doer claimed that Keystone is "more energy efficient," and that President Obama's own scientists in the U.S. State Department have said that "failure to do it means that higher greenhouse gases are created."

Well, hold on now. The State Department initially concluded that despite risk of spills, a Keystone XL pipeline would be preferable, environmentally speaking, to rail cars for transporting tar sands crude. But a Scientific American article ("Keystone Pipeline Will Impact Climate Change, State Department Reports") says that the State Department subsequently examined greenhouse gas (GHG) implications in detail in a January 2014 Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement. The State Department now says that increased GHG emissions from Keystone XL would be "equivalent to annual GHG emissions from combusting fuels in approximately 270,833 to 5,708,333 passenger vehicles."

Asked about Keystone XL after the mid-term election, President Obama said, "I'm just going to gather up the facts." One hopes he does not get them from Ambassador Doer.

What about pipelines in Canada? Despite Harper government approval of Enbridge's Northern Gateway proposal, First Nations court challenges and resistance from citizens' groups make it unlikely that tar sands crude will proceed along the proposed route through British Columbia to Kitimat on the Pacific coast.

MORE:

[ http://rabble.ca/columnists/2014/11/tar ... nergy-east ]

Al Gore Urges Obama to Reject Keystone XL Pipeline

[ http://ecowatch.com/2014/12/12/al-gore- ... a-85909581 ]

Democracy Now! | December 12, 2014 10:18 am

Democracy Now! is broadcasting from the United Nations climate summit in Lima, Peru, where high-level talks have just gotten under way. Here is the coverage from today:

Former VP Al Gore Urges Obama to Reject Keystone XL as Kerry, Top U.S. Negotiator Stay Mum

With an impassioned plea for climate action on Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry is the highest ranking U.S. official to attend the annual U.N. Climate Change Conference since President Obama took part in the 2009 Copenhagen talks. While Kerry spoke for 30 minutes, he never addressed an issue on the minds of many: the proposed Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. Kerry must make a final recommendation to Obama about whether the $8 billion pipeline should be approved. Amy Goodman speaks to former Vice President Al Gore, who attended Kerry’s speech, about why he wants Obama to reject the Keystone XL. She then tries to raise the issue with Kerry and top U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern, but both refuse to answer.

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[ http://ecowatch.com/2014/12/12/al-gore- ... a-85909581 ]