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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: 3, Insightful) by drussell on Sunday November 19 2017, @03:18PM (10 children)
Though it may seem like a lot at first glance, 5000 barrels of oil isn't actually a very large spill. The pressure drop in the pipeline would have been noticed virtually instantly by the monitoring systems and the line shut down and isolated automatically. It looks bad for TCPL on the publicity front and it certainly IS a bad thing but it isn't nearly as horrifying as some people would love for you to believe. Compared to something like the Exxon Valdez which dumped 260,000 barrels into the ocean, cleaning up 5000 barrels on land is a piece of cake. Even more distressing is something like the Deepwater Horizon spill which spewed more like 5,000,000 barrels into the ocean. You need to keep it in perspective. Energy generation and distribution is always problematic in one way or another, even the "green" kinds.
5000 barrels is actually quite a small spill in the grand scheme of things and pipelines really are a pretty safe way to move oil around the land compared to things like train tank cars. Much less chance of large spills, fires, explosions and the like.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @03:31PM (8 children)
'cleaning up 5000 barrels on land is a piece of cake'
What does this say about where the pipeline goes near water?
Seems like:
1) Stuff happens, so we closely monitor the pipeline and shut it down quickly when there is a problem.
2) The line moves a LOT of product, so 'quick' means we only spill 5k barrels.
3) The impact on land is self contained, so the best plan is to just let is spill and clean up afterwords.
4) The impact near water is not self contained, so our plan there is [insert and answer that works here].
What do they do differently near rivers and lakes?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by drussell on Sunday November 19 2017, @03:37PM (6 children)
I'm all for a double-wall pipe to help with containment of potential spills where it goes anywhere near a waterway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @05:00PM (5 children)
I don't really get it. Why not just everywhere? It should at most double the price, is an oil pipeline really something they have to be so penny-pinching about?
If the answer is "yes", I'd say the easiest solution is to not have one, since it doesn't really seem to be much needed.
Also should be having e.g. water in the outer part of the pipe, so that leaks in either one are more easily detected instead of detecting the outer one being broken only when the inner one breaks - air would also be an option, but making it airtight might be overdoing it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @06:00PM (1 child)
It doesn't double the price. It more than doubles it because of the complexities of construction, the outer layer containing more steel than the inner, the raise cost of doing external inspections and so on and so forth.
Good idea, some hitches in implementation.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @12:57AM
i could see that a double wall pipe would more than double the cost of the actual pipe. But the rest of the job should be about the same -- surveying/route selection, purchasing the right-of-way, clearing land, digging the trench (or putting in supports for aboveground) and cleaning up after the installation crew comes through. All those cost a good bit and should be about the same for either single or double pipe.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 20 2017, @02:26AM (2 children)
I guess you don't own one then. The answer is "yes" as it would be for anything that we want to do economically rather than because we're spending a lot of money to show how awesome we are. Do a cost-benefits analysis, not some "cost doesn't seem important" rationalization.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @02:08PM (1 child)
I agree, but the implementation of the cost-benefits analysis should include,
if a spill happens the company cleans up everything and pays everyone all the way down for 99 years for any inflicted damage.
The problem is that the cost-benefit analysis usually only includes the costs of how to build this thing as cheaply as possible to have it work and generate revenue. It rarely includes proper cost analysis for risks, risks that are all to often dumped on the community instead of the original company. Or when that risk strikes, the liability falls on some small sub-company that has no resources and goes bankrupt, ...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 20 2017, @03:12PM
What inflicted damage? Your post has inflicted damage on the internet by making it dumber. Pay up to the 99 years of people who will use the internet and might one day stumble across your post.
The problem with imaginary damage, is that one can imagine a lot of it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @05:57PM
It says "do not fret"; much worse spills happen every year [wikipedia.org] in less PR-worthy locations, and the nature crunches them up and continues on.
This planet was having oil seeps in hundreds of places for millions of years, till greedy humans went and pumped out all surface reservoirs first thing. The nature naturally hadn't lost any of its coping mechanisms in the half-century since then.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @03:57PM
Yeah, it's not rape. I didn't put my whole penis in. She didn't resist that much.
*just a little spill* Damn thing was hardly worth fixing, right? Fuck off!