How to Read.

U.S. will do new studies on Keystone XL tar sands pipeline

March 15, 2011 | 7:53 pm LA Times


The U.S. State Department will require additional environmental studies before granting a permit for the 1,660-mile Keystone XL pipeline, proposed to carry oil from the tar sands of northern Canada through the U.S. heartland and on to south Texas.

This is the issue stated in the broadest possible terms. It has to be simple because otherwise most people will not read on. In this case, the word "oil" stands in for bitumen which is not exactly oil since it has a lot of other stuff mixed in with it but will be refined into oil once it reaches its destination.

The reporter uses the word "oil" partly because this is how the business people involved in the process have referred to it from the outset but also because to list the details about what is actually traveling through that pipeline would take another paragraph. After they were listed, you'd have to explain why they matter. This article is written by a senior journalist or it wouldn't be even this long. Word count matters more than detail.

In an announcement Tuesday, department officials said they would open a new round of public comments on a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, to be released in mid-April, with a decision on whether to grant a permit for the controversial pipeline now expected by the end of the year.

A copy of the announcement may be found here.

There is also commentary from all sides on the same blog.

Here, you need to see the announcement to understand that the government will be inviting comments. This could mean a number of things but one thing it means almost certainly is that you will need to make an effort and stay on top of this in order to make your comment to the people charged with making this decision. The people who care about this issue might be notified - probably not. If this statement puts your mind at ease? It probably shouldn't. It doesn't mean a coherent, comprehensive review of the situation will take place before making a decision, it means that the people in power recognize that they need to respect the American Constitution, consult with the American people and raise the issue in a forum that permits freedom of speech before they go ahead.

You can keep your rights and use them but nobody is likely to make it easy for you to do so.

Pipeline opponents have long called for new environmental reviews, looking especially at the ability of a standard oil pipeline to safely carry the diluted bitumen found in the tar sands of northern Alberta.

Here, the author does refer to bitumen but does not explain what it is. It's used as a synonym for oil and you might be forgiven for assuming that is the case. It kind of is but mostly, it's not. The author has, however, given you enough clues that you can look it up for yourself and in cases like this, you should because otherwise, you really cannot understand the rest of the article.

A study last month by three of the nation's biggest environmental organizations and the Pipeline Safety Trust warned of a higher risk of corrosion-related spills linked to higher levels of abrasives, temperature and acidity in tar sands oil -- claims that TransCanada, the pipeline builder, has rebutted.

Again, not exactly. It's not "tar sands oil" it's the raw material that comes out of the tar sands. It won't be oil until it's been steam treated and separated. Steam requires water. If you do the research on bitumen, that is clear. (then you might question why a water-rich area of the continent is sending something that requires steam treating to a water-poor part of the continent. They're not sending water to go along with it.)

Ranchers in Nebraska and surrounding states are also calling on the State Department to look at the possibility of a new pipeline route that would avoid a sandy, vulnerable area above the Ogallala Aquifer, a key source of farmland irrigation and drinking water that underlies eight states in the Great Plains.

Water is the central issue here. This is your clue about that.


Now that the State Department has announced the new studies, opponents are worried whether the month before release of the new draft EIS will be enough to do them right.

In order to meet the requirement to be objective, reporters sometimes veer sideways on the road to the point. This is one of those instances. Environmental groups want this pipeline stopped but saying that doesn't lend any extra weight to the story and doesn't give them much of a chance to give a complex quote on the subject. Since business interests are well coached on giving complex, articulate, easily digested quotes, most reporters reach for some kind of parity from less well coached and well funded sources who speak in opposition to corporate interests. This is one of those situations. The quote is true - it's just kind of beside the point and as a result, it makes "opponents" look a bit vague and shrill.

"I hope this is not a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement in name only. To do this job right, the State Department must analyze the air pollution and oil spills that can be expected from this pipeline, as well as explore alternative routes that avoid the Ogallala Aquifer. If they don’t, they will have a lot of angry ranchers to deal with," said Alex Moore, dirty fuels campaigner for Friends of the Earth.

See? Vague and Shrill - and he is a campaigner, not exactly a label that carries a whole lot of respect in the mainstream.

Moore said a spill last July of tar sands oil from a pipeline on the Kalamazoo River in Michigan provided evidence of the difficulty of cleaning up the thick, heavy material, especially in water. "The lesson we learned in the Kalamazoo River is that even six months later, they're nowhere near close to completing cleanup of that oil spill," he said.

This is absolutely true. Here's a link to prove it. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-02/enbridge-says-no-oil-remains-in-michigan-river-following-pipeline-rupture.html But by now, you probably doubt this source a little bit and are more likely to ask yourself what the other side of this story might have to say. There is also the question raised here, although unacknowledged, that if the State Department is considering granting permission for this project to come across the Canada/US border, why is it already in Michigan? Last time I checked, Michigan was part of the U.S. not Canada. (please note, I used the most conservative new report I could find as a citation here.)

Officials at TransCanada have insisted that similar oil has long been safely transported to U.S. markets.
"This oil product has been shipped into the U.S. for decades," TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard said. "It's very similar in its chemical properties to some of the heavier crudes being moved around the U.S. on a daily basis."

True. In tanker trucks. He doesn't say that.

Contrary to the study prepared by the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups, he said, "the continued claims about this being some kind of highly corrosive product just aren't true."
"We're prepared to invest $13 billion in a pipeline to carry oil from Canadian and American oil fields, and these groups continue to claim that we're going to put something in it that will destroy and eat away at the pipeline? Does that make sense from a business standpoint?"

Well, sometimes they actually lie. He can do this because he can claim it's opinion. But you need to pay close attention to the last part of what he says, where he asks if they would do this and asks if it makes sense form a business standpoint. When a corporate spokesperson says that, the answer is almost always "Yes, it does." This is because their lawyers and actuaries have done the research, crunched the numbers and come up with a balance sheet and the $$$ value to the company of being able to do this exceeds the cost of any potential disasters. This does not mean there is no risk. It means they've weighed the risk and decided it makes financial sense for them to take it. The same is true of the Gulf Oil spill and Union Carbide's Indian subsidiary in Bhopal. You may have noticed that BP and Dow are still in business and still profitable. Disaster scenarios are calculated risks and they refer to them as calculated risks because they involve profit/loss projections.

He said about a quarter of Keystone XL's oil would be domestic U.S. production of lighter conventional crude from oil fields in North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana.

This statement is doubtless also true. It's a little shady to put it in here because it throws the bait of well-paid jobs into the pool during a time of real economic crisis. Note, they don't dwell on this but it's thrown out there and people concerned with the economy will notice it.

Howard said demands for rerouting the pipeline around parts of the Ogallala Aquifer fail to consider that "hundreds" of pipelines already cross above the underground waterway. Restudying the route now, he added, would mean forfeiting a large amount of money the company has spent for easements on the present proposed right-of-way and ultimately lead to new environmental problems by making the pipeline longer.

Here, you should ask yourself, "hundreds of pipelines carrying what?" If they're carrying non-toxic substances, this is not a fair comparison, in fact, if they're carrying anything less toxic than bitumen (and that would be pretty hard to do) then it's just a distraction.

The Texas-based Consumer Energy Alliance, a group which promotes greater domestic energy security, questioned the need for more environmental reviews, saying the pipeline has already been thoroughly studied. "It’s good that we can finally see the goal posts, but at the same time it’s frustrating that they have been moved again," spokesman Michael Whatley said.

This is for balance. Put in quite innocently. Here it bears mentioning that it's all written by the reporter in good faith. It's an important article that shares important information but you need to know how to read it in order to sort the wheat from the chaff Corporations spend a lot of money preparing for statements like these and also encouraging groups like this to carry on with their work. It makes everyone look reasonable and gives the impression that all sides are cooperating. Sometimes these organizations are - well, let's not get into that. It's nice that people are talking and it's good that a group in Texas is quoted with clarity and sympathy here but you need to remember Corporate spokespeople are trained to derail this kind of statement before it's even made and one of the best ways to do that is to be sane and reasonable and cooperative with environmental groups from the outset - at least, in conversation.

In addition to looking at corrosion and routing issues, the State Department should be examining the impact of boosting reliance on tar sands oil, the production of which results in the emission of a much larger proportion of greenhouse gases than conventional oil, along with the impact of the pipeline on air pollution in Gulf Coast refining communities, said Liz Barratt-Brown, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"We think that an honest review will show that the Keystone XL pipeline is not needed and is too risky to permit,” she said.

There's the meat of the case being made against this project. Did you get this far? A lot of readers wouldn't. You always should.

The State Department in its announcement said the public would have an additional 45 days to comment on the new Supplemental EIS. The department will hold a public meeting in Washington, D.C., before making a final decision, required before any pipeline can cross into the U.S. from a foreign country.

-- Kim Murphy
LA Times, March 15, 2011

Here's a link to the article as it appears in its original form:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2011/03/tar-sands-oil-keystone-xl-state-dept.html