President Barack Obama has finally let the shoe drop on the Keystone XL pipeline. His rejection of the partially built pipeline was expected. It is now the answer to many other pipeline proposals emanating from the tar sands of Alberta. Keystone XL was just the stalking horse.
What the American President said was that if we are intent on preserving this planet “We are going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground.” He was saying that the bitumen derived from the tar sands is too polluting to be used to make synthetic oil.
And the people who want to exploit the tar sands for profit should be the losers. They have lied and denied and defied for too long. By no stretch of the imagination can Alberta bitumen be described as “heavy oil.” It is not oil. It is nature’s mistake in the creation of petroleum. It is the same pitch as the Phoenicians used to waterproof their galleys that plied the Mediterranean. It is the mortar that built ancient Babylon. It was only when crude oil is priced over US$60 a barrel that money can be made in tar sands exploitation.
One of the mistakes we make is to treat Venezuelan bitumen the same as Canada’s. The tar sands in Venezuela have a lower viscosity than Canadian bitumen. It actually is a heavy form of oil. This is mainly shipped to the Unites States where there are specialized refineries at the Texas Gulf ports that can work with it.
Diluting and heating bitumen slurry and pumping it under high pressure is the theory behind proposed pipelines such as Enbridge’s Gateway pipeline over the Rockies to Kitimat, the twinning of the Kinder Morgan pipeline over the Rockies to Burnaby or TransCanada’s Energy East or Enbridge’s converted gas pipeline to Saint John. All of these pipelines are guaranteed time bombs of disastrous spills that are almost impossible to clean up. On land a bitumen spill is a toxic fire hazard that leaches into the water table. On water, the spill gradually sinks to the bottom as the lighter diluting material washes away.
On the west coast the intent is clearly understood to have ocean-going tankers load the bitumen for shipment to countries that do not care about the pollution caused. The eastern destinations have refineries there but the intent is obvious to ship it and do the conversion to synthetic oil elsewhere in the world.
It is this hypocrisy of Canada’s tar sands exploiters that has earned Canada the enmity of people concerned about global warming. U.S. President Barack Obama just did Canada a big favour by stopping the Keystone XL pipeline.
-30-
Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]