Comments on:
United
States Department of State
Draft
Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SSIS)
For the
KEYSTONE XL
PROJECT
Applicant
for Presidential Permit:
TransCanada
Keystone Pipeline, LP
Project site with full text of all documents: http://www.keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/
General:
The decision
on the Keystone XL permit should be made on a variety of considerations, one of
which is environmental concerns. The
NEPA documents prepared by United States Department of State (DOS) on this
issue fail to provide a balanced analysis of environmental issues. The President of the United States (POTUS) may
decide that other considerations overwhelm any and all environmental
considerations, but that is no excuse for DOS to provide a deeply flawed Supplemental
Environmental Impact Statement (SSIS) to POTUS as decision support.
The Draft
SSIS does not present balanced analysis of environmental issues related to the
decision to permit or not permit. It
appears that the DOS was outside of its area of expertise in the management of the
National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) process and development of the
Draft SSIS. This has allowed the oil industry
and its contractor (ERM) to manage the DOS, rather than the DOS managing the
content of the document. As this
document stands, it demonstrates that DOS cannot resist the influence oil companies,
including oil companies of foreign states, to prepare a balanced, fact based,
decision support document on a topic of great importance to the US.
A failure to produce a NEPA compliant Environmental
Impact Study would open the entire decision to judicial review, even if the
final decision was based on non-environmental considerations.
Specific issues
are as follows:
1 The market analysis makes it appear the oil
reserves will be exploited whether or not the permit is granted. This issue cannot be factually determined
without a global analysis of refining capacity, which the document does not
supply. Moreover, the document does not consider the options of the Department
of State (DOS) or President of the United States (POTUS) such as specific conditions
on the pipeline permit. Failure to
consider DOS/POTUS options rather than (purported) oil industry options make
the document non-compliant with NEPA.
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
requires an analysis of the environmental impacts the entire life-cycle of the KEYSTONE
XL PROJECT. That includes carbon
emissions and affects on climate change and global warming. The amount of carbon released into the
atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) for every unit of useful l
energy is critical to this analysis. The mining of tar sand bitumen uses more
energy and releases more CO2 than the production of conventional crude. The mining process releases significant
amounts of CH4. And the refining of diluted bitumen (dilbit) produced to allow
transport of tar sands material through unheated pipelines into consumer fuels
is more energy intensive than the refining of conventional crude oil. The life
cycle production and release of greenhouse gases to produce a unit of energy is
not addressed.
3 Total cost per unit of energy will determine how
much of the Alberta Tar Sands are mined.
If the pipeline is not approved then the price of energy from the
Alberta Tar sands will be higher, and less used in the near term. In the near term without the pipeline, we
will use more conventional oil, which results in much lower greenhouse gas
emissions per unit of recovered energy.
The entire analysis of alternative transport options (rail) available to
the Alberta tar sands industry is a diversion.
The NEPA analysis of options should have been an analysis of options
available to the POTUS/DOS. This was
not done. A review of possible industry
responses such as transport by rail should have been included as an appendix to
provide POTUS/DOS staff with insight as to possible oil industry responses to the
decision made by POTUS. The analysis of possible industry responses should have
analysis such as global refinery capacity to provide POTUS/DOD staff with
useful knowledge as to which industry responses are potentially real, and which
has been offered up by the oil industry as bluster and bluff to push POTUS
toward a decision allowing greater oil industry profits.
4 The Draft SSIS lumps conventional crude oil,
synthetic crude oil, and dilbit together as being similar in composition and
quality to the crude oils currently transported in pipelines in the US and
being refined in Gulf Coast. However,
while these different fluids may behave similarly (in the short term) while in
a pipe or tank, after release (spill, leak) into the environment, they have
different fate and transport behaviors, and very different environmental
toxicity. In
particular, spills of conventional crude and dilbit behave very differently
when spilled into water. The authors of
the Draft SSIS seem intent on avoiding any discussion of the fate and transport
of dilbit in the environment or the environmental toxicology of dilbit. The
Draft SSIS contains no information on the toxicology of dilbit. The SSIS should
disclose the environmental fate and transport mechanisms and environmental toxicity of dilbit in
detail.
The Draft SSIS is not compliant with NEPA as it
does not address likely impacts of the ongoing operation of the pipeline. In particular, long term leaks seeping into
aquifers are ignored. For example, hazardous material spills during
construction are addressed in more detail as a diversion from the more serious
issue of spills during operation of the pipeline. While hazardous materials spills during
pipeline construction are frequently more numerous, they are generally small. And, there are generally some leaks and spills
during pipeline startup, but everybody is alert, and these are caught quickly
and remain small. It is after years of
pipeline operation that significant leaks and spills develop. The Draft SSIS deals with the hazardous
materials (hazmat) spill issues during construction by including “boilerplate“ of
generic oil infrastructure construction procedures without an warranty from the
pipeline constructor that such procedures will be followed . This is not informative as there is no warranty
that such procedures will be followed. In
fact, the inclusion of such materials suggests that ERM has a relationship and
conflict of interest with potential pipeline constructor(s). The Draft SSIS glosses the engineering basis
of design for leak detection, leak prevention, and spill cleanup of spills from
the sustained operation of the pipeline. The Draft SSIS does not recommend procedures
for the sustained operation of the pipeline. One option of POTUS not addressed in the Draft
SSIS is to set specific engineering basis of design for leak detection, leak
prevention, and spill cleanup of spills from the sustained operation of the
pipeline. Another option of POTUS not
addressed in the Draft SSIS is to set specific procedures for the sustained
operation of the pipeline. These two
POTUS options are not addressed in the Draft SSIS.
NEPA requires determination of environmental
impact, which may be different from mere compliance with US - Department of
Transportation (USDOT) regulations. At
the very least, The SSIS should include a list of lessons learned from recent dilbit
spills from pipelines operating under current USDOT regulations. Pipelines are not a “build and forget
infrastructure.”
8 The route of the pipeline crosses large, high value
aquifers, and the underground placement of the pipeline makes leak monitoring
difficult. Given the unstated
environmental fate and transport of dilbit and the unstated environmental
toxicology of dilbit, sustained, low rate releases of dilbit into these aquifers
could result in catastrophic damage to these aquifers for which no response or
cleanup technology is stated in the Draft SSIS. Given current technologies,
response and cleanup of such an event is not possible. Given the physics and
chemistry of the situation, no reasonable response and cleanup technology is
likely to be developed. This issue has
been acknowledged in Nebraska where the route of the pipeline has been changed,
but the topic needs to be addressed in detail where the pipeline is proposed to
be buried over valuable aquifers. For the SSIS to gloss this issue is to make a
mockery of the whole NEPA concept. A
reasonable option to the POTUS would be to require the placement of the
pipeline above ground and make secondary containment with leak detection a
requirement of the permit. Or, POTUS could allow placement of the pipeline
underground, but require secondary containment and fail safe leak
detection. This is a good example of where
NEPA requirements for review of (POTUS/DOS) options are ignored in the Draft SSIS. POTUS is not limited by what will make the most
money for Transcanda and tar sands oil producers. POTUS can do what is best for US interests.
9 The market analysis neglects refinery
capacity. While it would be possible to
ramp up rail capacity to move the bitumen to some port rather rapidly, the
permitting, design, and construction of additional refinery capacity is much
slower. The tar sand oil industry could
transport the bitumen to the Pacific Coast, but then, where would they refine
that material at a reasonable cost? The proposed pipeline is small by current
standards because there is not enough excess refinery capacity in the Gulf to
justify building a larger and more expensive pipeline at this time. In addition, the Draft SSIS neglects to
mention that the Chinese national oil company (Sinopec Group) is a large (49%)
owner of Talisman Energy and other tar sands oil producers. Korean and Japanese oil companies have also
invested in tar sands production capacity. The Draft SSIS market analysis does not mention that Pacific
Rim countries control much of the oil going into the pipeline, increasing the likelihood
of the refined oil passed through the US and being sold in Europe, so that
other supplies will be available to Asia. See for example: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Following-Keystone-Rejection-Canadas-Oil-Sands-Headed-to-China.html However, the market analysis of the Draft
SSIS relates to oil industry responses to the option selected by POTUS and not
to the options available to POTUS. Thus,
the industries’ alternate transportation options belong in an appendix as
background reading for DOS/POTUS staff.
1 The Draft SSIS market analysis is more
of an advocacy argument than a balanced analysis. And, in fact many of ERM’s customers
have a financial interest in the Keystone pipeline, even if the exact names do
not appear on contracts with ERM. In
fact, the original EIS contractor, Entrix, had an undisclosed conflict of interest
resulting from a task order agreement Entrix had with BP, when BP owned
substantial interests in ConocoPhillips, Talisman Energy, and other Alberta tar
sands oil producers. BP became Entrix’s largest and most profitable
client during the time when the Keystone XL EIS document was being prepared. Thus, DOS does not have a history of being able to
monitor its contractors on this project. There are a huge number of companies,
partners, owners, and subsidiaries of companies that own interests in Alberta
tar sand oil production that will benefit from Keystone XL; and ERM does
business with many of these oil companies. Oil companies have used their lobbyists to
influence politicians in favor of the pipeline.
Oil companies have used public relations firms to sway the public in
favor of the pipeline, in part by saying it will reduce US fuel costs. For example, BP was saying the Keystone XL
pipeline would reduce US fuel prices even as it was selling its stake in
Talisman Energy (a large Alberta tar sands oil producer) to Sinopec Group – the Chinese national oil company. It does not appear that DOS has appreciated
the potential organizational conflicts of interest, lobby efforts, and well
funded public relations campaigns supported by the oil companies. It appears that the DOS is prepared to put
their institutional stamp of approval on one-sided oil company propaganda.
1 The Draft SSIS averages away the impacts of climate
change. For infrastructure basis of
engineering design, climate change results in a fat tailed probability
distribution of extreme events. Climate change increases the probability of
extreme weather events that are greater than the structure is engineered to
withstand. Climate change has raised the
average sea level only a few millimeters, but it has enabled extreme events
such as Katrina, Isabel, Isaac, and Sandy.
It was not the average sea level rise that caused the damage, but the
extreme events. Likewise it is not average
temperature that will damage engineered structures such as a pipeline, but
extreme heat events that are outside of the basis of engineering design. Likewise, it is not average precipitation over
the next 30 years that will damage engineered structures; it is the extreme precipitation
events made possible by extended climate change and the resulting changes in
atmospheric circulation. The most
extreme of these events are likely to come after the corrosive and erosive
properties of dilbit have acted on the pipeline for decades, and the pipeline
is more fragile. The Draft SSIS is silent on these issues.
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