Bitumen, the petroleum of the tar sands.
Obama said he won't approve KXL if it "significantly" worsened CO2 emissions. @EPA just used "significant" 4 times to describe KXL's impact
— @Agent350
The State Department is nearing the end of the process of determining whether or not the Keystone XL pipeline is in the "national interest." Neela Banerjee at InsideClimate News
has written an excellent piece about that process.
Among its key elements are examining more than two million public comments about the pipeline and pondering what eight federal departments and agencies have to say about the environmental review. The reports from those eight were due Monday.
The Environmental Protection Agency had this to say in the report it released publicly:
The analysis of climate change issues has also improved from the Draft SEIS. The Final SEIS makes clear that oil sands crude has significantly higher lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than other crudes. The Final SEIS states that lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from development and use of oil sands crude is about 17% greater than emissions from average crude oil refined in the United States on a wells-to-wheels basis.
The Final SEIS also finds that the incremental greenhouse gas emissions from the extraction, transport, refining and use of the 830,000 barrels per day of oils sands crude that could be transported by the proposed Project at full capacity would result in an additional 1.3 to 27.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (MMTC02-e) per year compared to the reference crudes. To put that in perspective, 27.4 MMTC0 2-e per year is equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from 5.7 million passenger vehicles or 7.8 coal fired power plants.3 Over the 50-year lifetime of the pipeline, this could translate into releasing as much as 1.37 billion more tons ofgreenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Until ongoing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of oil sands are more successful and widespread, the Final SEIS makes clear that, compared to reference crudes, development of oil sands crude represents a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions.
The EPA also notes that if oil prices remained high, the assessment that tar sands petroleum would make it to market even if the pipeline weren't built is probably correct, even if it meant sending that petroleum via more rail, which is more expensive. But if the price of oil remains low, then building the pipeline would mean more tar sands would be extracted and shipped than would otherwise be the case.
Bill McKibben, co-founder of the climate change group 350.org and a lifelong environmental activist, said: “In a city where bureaucrats rarely say things right out loud, the EPA has come pretty close. Its knife-sharp comments make clear that despite the State Department’s relentless spin, Keystone is a climate disaster by any realistic assessment. The president's got every nail he needs to finally close the coffin on this boondoggle.”
Let's hope President Obama is digging in his toolbox for a hammer.
