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Keystone Pipeline leaks 210,000 gallons of oil in South Dakota
Keystone Pipeline leaks 210,000 gallons of oil in South Dakota
"A total of 210,000 gallons of oil leaked Thursday (Nov 16, 2017) from the Keystone Pipeline in South Dakota, the pipeline's operator, TransCanada, said.
Crews shut down the pipeline Thursday morning, and officials are investigating the cause of the leak, which occurred about three miles southeast of the town of Amherst, said Brian Walsh, a spokesman for the state's Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
This is the largest Keystone oil spill to date in South Dakota, Walsh said. The leak comes just days before Nebraska officials announce a decision on whether the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, a sister project, can move forward."
Keystone pipeline - major leak/spill
Elsewhere there are notes of smaller spills in the same pipeline--this AC submitter is wondering about the long term use of a pipeline that is leaking when it's nearly brand new. Doesn't sound good for the long term.
PBS has a followup article from today (Saturday), 'We need to know' more about Keystone oil pipeline leak, tribal chairman says
The leak comes as the debate over the proposed path of the Keystone XL pipeline rages on. Nebraska's Public Service Commission is scheduled to announce its decision Monday on whether to permit TransCanada to build Keystone XL along its proposed route in the state, the Omaha World-Herald reported. A spokeswoman for the commission told the AP that the board's members will only use information provided during public hearings and official public comments in order to make their decision.
Related:
US District Court: Approval of Dakota Access Pipeline Violated the Law
Dakota Access Pipeline Suffers Oil Leak Even Before Becoming Operational
Company Behind Dakota Access Oil Pipeline Sues Greenpeace
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday November 20 2017, @02:07PM (6 children)
Why is that necessarily retarded to suppose that the tribe would sabotage the pipeline to score political points or get money? They tried that tactic before when there was an "OMG!!!" spill of, what, 50,000 gallons that when you looked at it was about the size of a half lot next to a gas station. And that was supposed to be the absolute proof that pipelines are dangerous and will destroy all life on Earth as we know it.
Further, all that "belonging to the land, harmony with nature crap" is crap. It's designed for white liberal consumption. Actually go to a reservation and observe how well they belong to the land and live in harmony with nature. Any Indian property, from the Blackfeet in North Central Montana, to the Crow Agency in South Eastern Montana/NE Wyoming/NW South Dakota, to the Navajo in AZ, etc. etc. and there will be minimum 3 junk cars and crap piled to the heavens without one thought for aesthetics or nature spirits. If they are so careless with their own personal property that they own, how can we believe they treasure the rest of the land?
Archaeological evidence of what Indians did before European contact is not particularly complimentary either. It's not conclusive, but there was a mass die-off of major fauna in the Americas around the time humans are reckoned to have arrived. Over-hunting, perhaps? We further know that around the time of the earliest European contact in what is now the United States the Iroquois had so persecuted the Algonquin peoples to their east and depopulated their lands that the ones who were left under King Phillip ran into the arms of the Pilgrims hoping for new allies to help them turn the tide. In other words, systematic warfare and ethnic cleansing had already been long practiced in the Americas. No innocents, they.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @03:27PM
you seem to have a dim view of the natives. they arent allowed to be on the land they were forcibly moved from under the threat of death and now the white people want to poison the shitty land they were given due to the white people's liberal consumption taking precedence for the good land.
there's no pleasing people like you if someone objects to your conveniences
you take examples of object poverty enforced upon them as reasons to keep them poor. nice logic
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @05:13PM
Have you been playing the long con? Now your narrative switches to a more conservative pro-business one after years building up social credit? It sure would be a good tactic to try and sway those that give your words consideration.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday November 20 2017, @10:26PM (3 children)
Yes. That level of self harm is extreme. Literally cutting off your nose to spite your face. So I don't believe it, unless it was one random pissed off guy that is NOT a tribe member. An organized sabotage because they protest DAPL, because it might fail? No, that is not all that credible to begin with. Certainly not because some natives had derelict cars in their front yards.
That makes no sense dude. No, I'm not saying that I have the delusion that the natives were perfect, or are perfect. They are, however, the ones consistently speaking on behalf of nature. You're correct, I don't know if right after the loving nature speech some natives go back to their properties filled with pollution and garbage. For the record, having a few derelict cars in your front yard can also be attributed to the redneck stereotype. "If you cut your lawn, and find three vehicles.... you might be a redneck".
Oh, by the way, in the end none of it matters. We had a treaty, it was signed, it IS sovereign land. Just because our government isn't representative of us any longer, or gives a shit about the environment, does it mean that it's okay to throw away our national honor.
So no, I don't believe Frojack's implications that members of the tribe might have sabotaged it. That would be like me sabotaging the sewage lines near my place so I can enjoy the fetid wastewater in my own home. Just to spite the landlord. Unless there is evidence of sabotage, negligence and mechanical failure are the most likely culprits. It's just offensive to make that claim without any proof at all to back it up, beyond some stereotypes and derelict cars.
Simply because I don't think normal people will shit in their own backyard, to complain to others about the shit in their own backyard, or blame strangers for it. These are the words and actions of more than on native as well. I doubt that the tribe itself would sanction any action that might release tar sands into the same environment they need to live in.
Okay. Twenty-five 2k gallon containers might fit on half a lot, but that much seeping into nature and the waterways is still bad. This leak is over four times as bad, so let's just say an entire lot and the gas station peppered with 2,000 gallon containers.
Spilling onto the surface of the ground might not seem so bad at first, but this shit ain't biodegradable like a banana peel you know. Nature will start to distribute that in ground water, and just rains on the surface transporting the pollution into a larger area.
What if that spill was IN the waterways? You think 50,000 gallons is innocent? This is tar sands too, that amount of it, WILL have a negative impact on nature. You seem to want to downplay that as if it's not that big a deal. IT IS.
The accidents I'm not concerned about are the pumping station accidents that can easily mitigate a thousand gallons or so because of a leak at the station. In the middle of the line is a whole different story. Straight into nature, and not into a concrete retaining area around the pump. No biggie, and not really even news. What we are talking about is so much worse, because it was a failed weld in a system they promised would be free of such things. With all the advanced tech available on market, there is absolutely zero excuse for a failed weld beyond negligence of some kind. This wasn't a weld in a fence where failure isn't catastrophic, but similar to a critical weld failing on a space station.
Regardless of the tribe, they failed.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday November 21 2017, @12:19AM (2 children)
I don't understand what you're saying here... We're talking about the transportation of crude oil. I fail to see what the origin of that crude has to do with your argument. I'm not saying we should go around randomly spilling any mix of hydrocarbons around into nature willy-nilly, but implying it is somehow worse because it is from the oilsands is silly.
The crude we're talking about was extracted from bitumen, which in some places is so abundant that is is right on the surface. Gooey black oily sand to essentially natural asphalt pavement. The natives in the area used to caulk their canoes and such with it... In some places it oozes right out of the ground into puddles! How is it so horrible if a little bit of it ends up on the ground somewhere else temporarily until they clean it up? There are literally thousands of square miles of it in Northern Alberta... It is just sitting there in the ground. You dig it up, slurp out the oily goo and return the nicely cleaned sand and earth back to the forest. I would think the trees and the woodland critters probably like the after-soil better than the before-soil when it comes to the oilsands people slurping the black goo out....
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday November 21 2017, @12:39AM (1 child)
Not at all silly. It's what the experts say. No, HuffPost isn't an expert, but this does a decent job of explaining it the difference between tar sands and regular oil. Having physically seen both, yeah, there is a pretty big difference. Regular oil is a lot more easier and safer to transport, in particular because tar sands actually contain sand. It's fucking abrasive as hell to the pipes. At least more so than regular oil, making tar sands pipelines inherently more dangerous. Yet, I'm still not against it if the proper measures are taken, and triple that at waterway crossings or anyplace it traverses groundwater too close to the surface.
Yeah, it's Greenpeace, but it's a good explanation [greenpeace.org]...
So, absolutely yes, it's worse. Not somehow worse, but worse in known and quantified ways.
I can see your point about land, but you need to remember that it has been modified. That shit don't flow through a pipe, unless you make enough into a liquid to flow under pressure. So when the pipe breaks, it isn't natural bitumen finding a new place in nature with human assisted migration. It's what bitumen becomes after the process to prep it for shipping via pipeline.
The part that is really horrible is when this modified shit gets into a waterway, or seeps into ground water. I'm betting your average Canadian doesn't drink well water that is really close to these bitumen fields. In this modified state it has the potential, and has already happened, to cause vastly increased (200x) levels of carcinogens in the water supply.
Moreover, why do we need to ship this shit thousands of miles again? Canada isn't land locked or some shit. They could make it traverse their entire country to the Atlantic, or even better, perform the refining locally. After processing into regular product they could ship that far more safely.
Only reason why we are taking the risks are the monetary rewards for the few.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday November 21 2017, @10:48AM
That mostly applies to stuff moving around right near the mines, getting it to the upgrader, etc. You do realize we don't ship the actual sandy goo over long distances, right? That isn't what spilled out of the Keystone Pipeline. It only has any significant sand and crap in it at the first stages of production. The goo is extracted and via various different possible processes is turned into what is called "synthetic crude" so it is still "heavy" in oil parlance, but it isn't like asphalt anymore...
Yeah, but that isn't what spilled! That applies mostly to the original goo that is processed here in Alberta, not the synthetic crude we ship out for further processing and refining. Sure, it has some nasty hydrocarbon fractions in it but so does other crude. As long as you keep it out of waterways and clean up anything else that ends up back on the ground it's not nearly as nasty as the zealots would have you believe.
Crude of any type has all sorts of nasties in it. Cracking some long hydrocarbon chains or adding a bunch of lighter ones doesn't in and of itself make it any worse than some of the random blends that come out of some traditional wells. That's why we no longer dump any of them it into streams and rivers (like the early refiners in the US did with the "waste" gasoline, for example) and clean it up if it ends up in the soil. I'd be much more worried about the consequences of fracking mixing everything up in the geology than extracting some of the goo from the oilsands.
Yes, we could sell it abroad, however, it makes far more sense to send it safely through a pipe to the US for use instead of the US importing oil from abroad too. Shipping large quantities of crude by sea is really one of the worst ideas, IMHO.
So, you don't ever use any oil or oil-related products? Kudos!