What's going to be in the Keystone XL pipeline? Heavy Canadian Crude from the Tar Sands in Alberta. Here is a list of industry names for it:
Access Western Blend, Borealis Heavy Blend, Christine Dilbit Blend, Cold Lake, Heavy Sour Dilbit, Peace River Heavy, Seal Heavy Blend, Statoil Cheecham Blend, Wabasca Heavy Blend, Western Canada Select, . All the sites on the map are producing tar sands bitumen. In some areas it is strip mined and in others it is extracted by steam. Let me be clear, it is DILBIT, diluted bitumen from Alberta Canada's tar sands ecocide. It's the dirtiest crude in the world, full of muck, sand and extra chemicals. The exact formulae are proprietary secrets but you can find a list of what might be in it here: under Heavy Sour Dilbit.
After the latest dilbit disaster in Mayflower, AR, a spokesperson for Exxon tells KARK, Arkansas' news Station that the spill is "Wabasca Crude oil." It is not oil, it is dilbit. As one writer puts it, "it's like calling all tomatoes, 'ketchup'." It has a long way to go in the refineries before becoming oil.
Here is a map that shows where dilbit comes from in various places in northern Alberta. On the lower right is Hardisty, AB where the Keystone XL begins.
Northern Alberta Canada, Map from Center for Energy
Crude from all these sites is not conventional oil, it is Tar Sands Bitumen, and in the pipeline in its diluted form, it is DILBIT. That's what is going to be in the 36" wide, 1,703 miles of the Keystone XL pipeline (KXL). This pipeline will cross the US landscape from north to south with a capacity of 900,000 barrels per day.
The oil industry claims that it has been "safely" delivering tar sands crude for 10 years. But as Anthony Swift of Natural Resources Defense Council tells us:
The transport of increasing volumes tar sands on the U.S. pipeline system is a recent development. Thick tar sands diluted bitumen substantially differs from the lighter conventional crudes historically moved on the U.S. pipeline system. The first imports of diluted bitumen came from pipelines in the northern Midwest in the late 90s and have increased exponentially since then. Accident reports from the Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) shows that those northern Midwestern states moving the largest volumes of tar sands diluted bitumen for the longest period of time spilled 3.6 times as much crude per mile as the national average from 2010 to 2012.
The KXL begins in Hardisty, Alberta and it will end in Nederland, Texas. Why isn't the dilbit refined in Canada? It's cheaper to send it down to refineries in Texas to have it refined there. (A by-product of the refining is called pet-coke which is dirtier than coal and it is now being sold in North America and overseas.)
What happened when the largest bitumen spill in the USA occurred in Marshall MI? It took Enbridge 17 hours to shut down the pipeline. At one point they increased the pressure thinking the alarm was false and it was only a bubble in the line that would work its way out. The alarm was signalling a 6.5' split in the Enbridge 6B pipeline in Marshall MI. The beginning of a spill that ended up leaking 1 million gallons (the number of gallons keeps growing) of dilbit into a creek and that ended up contaminating a 36 mile stretch of the Kalamazoo River. The Enbridge response is a catalogue of industry mis-management of the crisis followed by spin and deceit about the accident. Thanks to Elizabeth McGowan and Lisa Song of Inside Climate News and their book The Dilbit Disaster we have a recent history lesson on how a major spill was handled by the pipeline owners, Enbridge.
The Dilbit Disaster: Inside The Biggest Oil Spill You've Never Heard Of
From the award-wining e-book,
The Dilbit Disaster, here is the timeline of the leak of Tar Sands Crude mixed with Cold Lake Crude into the Talmadge Creek and then into the Kalamazoo River. The timeline starts up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada at the Enbridge control center and it ends in the Marshall, MI. The first alarm goes off at 5:57pm EDT July 25, 2010 in Edmonton and Endbridge confirms the leak at 11:45am EDT July 26, 2010.
The clean-up is not over to this day. It was dangerously delayed by Enbridge's refusal to be forthcoming about exactly what was spilled. Witnesses described it as having the "consistency of peanut butter" and it was "sticky like chewing gum." Clean-up crewsdid not know what they were dealing with because they were trained for conventional oil spills. The pipelines are getting old (metal fatigue) and the dilbit appears to be corrosive so we can expect more devastating leaks like the ones in Marshall, MI and Mayflower, AR. The industry says it is not corrossive but if tests were made, that would be prorpriety information. What can we learn from the first big dilbit spill in Marshall, WI? The book puts forth enough information to provide a path to that end.
Dibit is so heavy that in places like wetlands, rivers and streams it is almost impossible to clean-up because it sinks. This Enbridge pipeline was a 66 year old pipeline that had a record of problems going back to 2007, split wide open 6.5' in a creek. The first alarm went off up in the operations center in Edmonton AB on July 25, 5:58 pm EDT. It wasn't shut down completely until the next afternoon. The ideal emergency response time for pipeline leaks registered with Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) between notification and shut down is usually 3 - 5 minutes.
By examining the timeline of the Marshall MI, Kalamazoo river spill we can imagine what could happen if the KXL pipeline were to have a spill.
July 25, 2010 at 5:58 pm EDT a high priority alarm goes off at the Enbridge operations center in Edmonton, AB. Five more alarms ring out indicating a discrepancy in volume in and volume out of the 6B line. The operators believe them to be false alarms caused by a bubble in the pipeline. They do not pass on the information to the next shift.
July 26, 4:00 am EDT, Edmonton, AB the pipeline is restarted with the pressure of a firehose triggering 6 more alarms. It is shut down again
5:00 am EDT, Edmonton, AB it is restarted with more pressure "to overcome the bubble"
6:00 am EDT, Marshall, MI, a resident beside ....Creek steps outside his home to an acrid smell that burns his throat. He leaves for work.
7:10 am EDT Edmonton, AB Pipeline 6B is started up again and pumped for 45 minutes
7:48 am EDT, the operator called for double the pressure but there was not enough power to do so.
This is the time when the Marshall, MI resident is called home by his wife because she is sickened by the odor. When he arrives home, he sees black goo over his lawn and goes to check the creek beside his property.
9:49 am EDT, Edmonton, AB operations center hears from Marshall, MI that there are no leaks detected. The employee is calling from 3/4 a mile from the actual leak.
10:00 am EDT approximately, Marshall MI, an Enbridge truck pulls up and orders the family living beside the creek to evacuate.
11:17 am EDT a public utility employee called Enbridge to report a leak. Check the link if you want to read the rest of their lies. I'm putting my trust in Inside Climate News.
11:45 am EDT, Enbridge officially confirms the leak.
Enbridge cannot explain the discrepancy between their 10:00 am visit to evacuate the family and the 11:17 official notification time because it's an ongoing investigation.
Enbridge's report claims the spill occurred July 26, 2010. They even lie in the title of their report. Click the link if you want to read more of their lies.
Are you confident about the future leaks and spills (they are certain to happen) of the new proposed Keystone XL pipeline after reading this? Obviously government needs to take control of these disasters and stop allowing the industry to call the shots. We need to know what's in the pipelines and where they are located and what to do in an emergency. For example before calling 911, call the pipeline company on their 24 hour emergency line. That might ensure that the operators shut down the flow before anything else. Look how much dilbit was released into the Kalamazoo river from the broken pipeline after the alarms went off. Say YES to more enforcement of government regulations regarding existing pipeline safety. Say YES to forcing the oil industry to be more open about what's in the pipelines.
SAY NO TO KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE EXPANSION!
Update 1. from The New York Times:
10:27 PM PT: Dilbit is Crude, Dirty and Dangerous
After the dilbit gushed into the river, it began separating into its constituent parts. The heavy bitumen sank to the river bottom, leaving a mess that is still being cleaned up. Meanwhile, the chemical additives evaporated, creating a foul smell that lingered for days. People reported headaches, dizziness and nausea. No one could say with certainty what they should do. Federal officials at the scene didn’t know until weeks later that the pipeline was carrying dilbit, because federal law doesn’t require pipeline operators to reveal that information.
Update 2. April 16, 2013:
Dilbit Disaster: The Oil Spill You Never Heard Of just won a Pulitzer Prize.
InsideClimate News reporters Elizabeth McGowan, Lisa Song and David Hasemyer are the winners of this year's Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.
The trio took top honors in the category for their work on "The Dilbit Disaster: Inside the Biggest Oil Spill You've Never Heard Of [2]," a project that began with a seven-month investigation into the million-gallon spill of Canadian tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River in 2010. It broadened into an examination of national pipeline safety issue [3]s, and how unprepared the nation is for the impending flood of imports of a more corrosive and more dangerous form of oil.
The Pulitzer committee commended the reporters [4] for their "rigorous reports on flawed regulation of the nation's oil pipelines, focusing on potential ecological dangers posed by diluted bitumen (or "dilbit"), a controversial form of oil."
The recent ExxonMobil pipeline spill in Arkansas [5], which also involved heavy Canadian crude oil, underscores the continuing relevance of this ongoing body of work, as the White House struggles with reaching a decision on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.
