Tar Sands Pipeline = Game over for the whole fucking planet

[FORD]

Bill McKibben, 350.org & Anthony Swift, Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) both join Thom Hartmann. There is no rational argument for the tar sands pipeline. The town of Mayflower, Arkansas woke up to oil running through its streets again today - all thanks to a pipeline that burst and flooded the town with thousands of gallons of oil. With devastating oil spills becoming increasingly common in America - why is President Obama still even considering the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline?

[ELVIS]

Nah...

You're on the wrong side of this issue...

[Angel]

I think the Keystone is stupid. We need to be refining it ourselves and become less dependant on foreign oil.

[WACF]

http://www.capp.ca/getdoc.aspx?DocID=209479

existing oil lines....

[WACF]

When I see people using the term "tar sands" it says a lot of how little they now about this piece of Alberta...and Saskatchewan.

Oil spills like this are ridiculous to say the least...but...the oil is going to move regardless of Keystone.
You would think this day and age that this could be stopped a lot quicker...the only positive is here it will get cleaned up...not gonna happen in Africa.

The oil sands oil moves now...by rail...worse for the environment I may add.

I agree with Angel...we should be building our own refineries but it seems it is cheaper to send it to Texas for refining rather than expand here.

For the record...I find it odd that the enviros would rather pick on safe Canada about oil but not other unethical counties and the human toll...but that could get you killed.

[Angel]

I get a kick out if the American news emphasizing Canadian oil, while Canadian stations emphasize American pipeline, lol.

[ZahZoo]

The pipeline that burst in Arkansas was built in 1943... Here's some history on it...

LITTLE ROCK, AR - We're learning more about the pipeline that's to blame for oil flowing through the streets in a Mayflower subdivision Friday afternoon.

ExxonMobil says the line is called Pegasus. The 20-inch pipeline originates in Illinois and carries oil to the Texas Gulf Coast. It runs from northeast Arkansas down through the southwest part of the state. (map from leadenergy.org)

According to a report from Bloomberg news, the line can transport 96,000 barrels of oil a day. In most cases, the oil comes from Western Canada. The line's capacity was dramatically increased from 30,000 barrels a day in 2009.

The pipeline reportedly carries tar sands oil, according to the same Bloomberg report sourced above. The Sierra Club, an environmental action group, calls tar sands the "dirtiest oil on earth."

ExxonMobil says the pipeline has leak detection technology. According to the company, the technology helped the pipeline operate in a "safe and environmentally responsible manner."



Click here to read the official statement on the rupture from ExxonMobil.

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A pipeline was built from Texas to Illinois as part of the war effort in 1943. It passed near Little Rock. Is this actual pipe the same one? Is the pipe itself 70 years old? Here's a video about the wartime construction in Arkansas: This may take you to a video of work on it in Arkansas: http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65...ctive-covering

Shirley S. March 30, 2013 at 10:59 pm

[BITEYOASS]

I get a kick out if the American news emphasizing Canadian oil, while Canadian stations emphasize American pipeline, lol.

Yeah, the nationalization by the media on this issue needs to stop. It's all just a big corporate scam designed to steal tax payer money from both countries for the sole purpose of importing this sludge to China.

[ZahZoo]

More interesting oil info...

OIL - You better be sitting down when you read this!



As you may know, Cruz Construction started a division in North Dakota just six months ago.

They sent every Kenworth (nine trucks) we had here in Alaska to North Dakota and several drivers.

They just bought two new Kenworth's to add to that fleet; one being a Tri Drive tractor and a new 65-ton lowboy to go with it.

They also bought two new cranes (one crawler & one rubber tired) for that division.

Dave Cruz said they have moved more rigs in the last six months in ND than Cruz Construction moved in Alaska in the last six years.

Williston is like a gold rush town; they moved one of our 40-man camps down there since there are no rooms available.

Unemployment in ND is the lowest in the nation at 3.4 percent, last checked.

See anything in the national news about how the oil industry is fueling North Dakota's economy?

Here's an astonishing read of important and verifiable information:

About six months ago, the writer was watching a news program on oil and one of the Forbes Bros. was the guest.

The host said to Forbes, "I am going to ask you a direct question and I would like a direct answer. How much oil does the U.S. have in the ground?"
Forbes did not miss a beat, he said, "more than all the Middle East put together."

The U. S.. Geological Service issued a report in April 2008 that only scientists and oil men knew was coming, but man was it big.

It was a revised report (hadn't been updated since 1995) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota,
western South Dakota, and extreme eastern Montana.

Check THIS out:

The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since
Alaska 's Prudhoe Bay , and has the potential to
eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable ( 5 billion barrels), at $107 a barrel, we're looking at a resource base worth more than $5.3 trillion.

"When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor."

They had no idea.." says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature's financial analyst.

"This sizable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years," reports The Pittsburgh Post Gazette .

It's a formation known as the Williston Basin, but is more commonly referred to as the 'Bakken.'

It stretches from Northern Montana, through North Dakota and into Canada.

For years, U. S. oil exploration has been considered a dead end.

Even the 'Big Oil' companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago.

However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken's massive reserves, and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels. And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL !!!!!!

That's enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 2041 years straight.

And if THAT didn't throw you on the floor, then this next one should - because it's from 2006 !!!

U.. S. Oil Discovery - Largest Reserve in the World

Stansberry Report Online - 4/20/2006

Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world.

It is more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction.

In three and a half years of high oil prices none has been extracted.

With this motherload of oil, why are we still fighting over off-shore drilling?

They reported this stunning news:

We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth.

Here are the official estimates:

8 times as much oil as Saudi Arabia,

18 times as much oil as Iraq,

21 times as much oil as Kuwait,

22 times as much oil as Iran,

500 times as much oil as Yemen,

and it's all right here in the Western United States !!!

HOW can this BE? HOW can we NOT BE extracting this? Because the environmentalists and others have blocked all efforts to help America become independent of foreign oil!
Again, we are letting a small group of people dictate our lives and our economy. WHY?

James Bartis, lead researcher with the study says we have more oil in this very compact area
than the entire Middle East, more than 2 TRILLION barrels untapped. That's more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in the world today, reports The Denver Post .

Don't think 'OPEC' will drop its price even with this find? Think again! It's all about the competitive marketplace, it has to.

Think OPEC just might be funding the environmentalists?

Got your attention yet? Now, while you're thinking about it, do this:

Pass this along. If you don't take a little time to do this, then you should stifle yourself the next time you complain about gas prices. By doing NOTHING, you forfeit your right to complain.

Now I just wonder what would happen in this country if every one of you sent this to every one in your address book.

By the way, this can be verified. Check it out at the link below !!!
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911> ; <http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asID=1911>http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911<http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911> >

Cruz Construction:
http://www.cruzconstruct.com/ ; <http://www.cruzconstruct.com/services..php> ;
"Life is not the way it's supposed to be. It's the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference."

[Satan]

The point here seems to be that the "oil" (using the term loosely) seems to be for completely foreign (i.e. not Canadian or US) consumption, but the Canadians know they won't get a pipeline for this shit built across the Rockies so they can export it out of BC, which is why they want to send it south to Texas.

At least Canada would get money out of it. America gets all the damage, and not one cent of profit.

The fact that this shit barely even meets the definition of "oil", and even then only through a highly toxic process, should be evidence enough that it's not the answer for anything.

Henry Ford and Karl Benz were designing engines to run on biodiesel 100 fucking years ago (Benz was looking at peanut oil, and Ford not only wanted a hemp fueled engine, he wanted to build a car from hemp too). If every US state and Canadian province that this pipeline of death is proposed in were growing hemp instead of this moving this toxic shit, how much clean fuel could be produced, that could be used in existing engines.

Sometimes the answer is easier than it looks. This would be one of those times.

[PETE'S BROTHER]

thank you satan

[sadaist]

- why is President Obama still even considering the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline?

Because with proper ENFORCED regulation and oversight, and no politicians taking bribes or backroom deals, a pipeline can be built and operated safely with a very low % of spillage. But that isn't how we operate. We take the union labor rather than the best labor. We cut corners to save money. Politicians & regulators look the other way for a sammich bag of cash. Ridiculous. If we could be honest, transparent, and above board we could do this well and all benefit from it with increased jobs and lowed oil prices.

[Satan]

More interesting oil info...

OIL - You better be sitting down when you read this!

chain e mail spam deleted

Really... chain e-mails??

When did you turn into 4morequeers??

You want to see what KKKoch Brothers money can buy you on the internet? Google the following phrase....

"The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska 's Prudhoe Bay, and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil."

You will see page after page of those exact words reproduced. It's very obviously an oil industry talking point.

Except it's not true.

The chain e mail (and most of these KKKoch funded spam sites) make it sound like this is simply a huge pool of light sweet crude oil buried under ground, just as it is in Iraq, or Saudi Arabia, or even Texas for that matter.

But that ain't the case. This is shale oil. Meaning you need to use the highly destructive and toxic fracking process to get to it. Which means it's no better of a solution than the tar sands.

Again... NOT the solution. Just a desperate attempt by some of the greediest corporate entities on Earth trying to keep you dependent on 19th century technology, rather than common sense, renewable sources of energy.

[ELVIS]

There are no marketable sources of renewable energy...

[Satan]

Fact check: Is the Bakken Formation America's oil bonanza?
FACT: It is indeed a real place, but other "data" about it isn't right.
Posted: March 7, 2010 - 4:00am | Updated: March 7, 2010 - 4:38am


By Carole Fader

Times-Union readers want to know:

Something called the Bakken Formation is supposedly the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska's Prudhoe Bay with over 500 billion barrels of oil that would potentially eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. This e-mail goes on to say that we have more oil inside our borders than all the other proven reserves on earth - eight times as much as Saudi Arabia, 18 times as much as Iraq, 21 times as much as Kuwait and so on. And it's the government, environmentalists and the media that are preventing drilling there. True?

The Bakken Formation is real. The other "facts" in this e-mail and others like it? Not so much.

The information is overblown and is based on early undocumented predictions.

The e-mail tells readers to go to the bottom of the page for a link to a 2008 U.S. Geological Survey report that confirms the truth of the information. Reader who go to that report will find it does just the opposite.

FactCheck.org traced estimates of 200 billion to 400 billion barrels in the Bakken Formation - which stretches over the Dakotas and Montana - to a 2006 Wall Street Journal story about an oil boom on the Montana Plains. But the e-mail leaves out an important part of that story: "The lofty predictions remain unproven and skeptics remain," according to FactCheck.org, a nonprofit fact-finding project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

FactCheck.org and Snopes.com also reference a 2000 draft report that included estimates of the Bakken oil reserve ranging "from 271 to 503 billion barrels of potential resources in place." But a November 2006 report from the Energy Information Administration warned that the draft "did not receive a complete scientific peer review by the USGS and was not published as a USGS product."

When the USGS assessed the Bakken Formation in 2008, it estimated it contains "3 billion to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil." The agency actually increased its estimate from 1995's 151 million barrels, but the number is still far short of the e-mail's purported 500 billion barrels.

Snopes.com, a well-respected Web site that confirms or debunks rumors and urban legends, also puts the number into perspective: "The U.S. currently imports an average of about 10 million barrels of oil per day, so even if all the estimated undiscovered oil in the Bakken Formation were extracted, it would only be enough to wean the U.S. off crude oil imports for one year ... not enough to fuel the American economy for 41 years straight as the e-mail claims."

Snopes.com linked some of the information in this and a similar e-mail to a tout sheet intended to sell subscriptions to an oil investment newsletter. That similar e-mail also breathlessly talks of 2 trillion barrels of oil beneath the Rocky Mountains. The figure comes from a 2005 RAND Corp. study. But, again, the e-mail omits that not all of that oil is recoverable and that extracting 1 million barrels a day is probably more than 20 years in the future.

Back to the Bakken. The USGS states on its Web site that there is no certain method to determine the exact volume of oil in the Bakken Formation or any formation.

But, according to the USGS, "the estimate of technically recoverable oil in the Bakken is larger than all other current USGS oil assessments of the lower 48 states and is the largest "continuous" oil accumulation ever assessed by the USGS.

No one is putting a stop to drilling in the Bakken. About 190 million barrels of oil has been extracted from it since the 1950s and as of August 2009, according to the USGS Web site.

The USGS has all currently available information on the Bakken Formation at energy.cr.usgs.gov/oilgas/noga/.