BNSF eastbound oil train in Bad Rock Canyon. Empties making the return trip to North Dakota for more Bakken oil. Near Columbia Falls Mont. Photo taken Jan. 5, 2013 by Roy Luck, courtesy of WikimediaCommons.
State Dept.’s updated report does little to clear the path for Obama to make a decision thwarting the pipeline
Perhaps it was intended to not make waves among environmentalists, however the State Department’s report released on Friday roiled the waters nonetheless. In it the State Department said there could be hundreds more deaths and thousands more injuries than expected over the course of a decade if the Keystone XL pipeline is not built, and freight trains are used instead.
Using a full annual incident dataset for the 10-year period, updates previously released revise estimates, increasing the number of injuries from 700 to 2,947 and number of fatalities from 92 to 434, according to the report.
As Reuters reports, the updated figures are a revision from a January State Department report which said that blocking the controversial pipeline could increase oil train traffic and lead to an additional 49 injuries and six deaths per year.
That finding was a small element of a broader examination of how building the pipeline could impact climate change, endangered species, quality of life and other issues.
But the report mistakenly used a forecast for three months of expected accidents rather than full-year figures, officials said. The correct estimate of deaths should be roughly four times as large – between 18 and 30 fatalities per year.
Officials also revised a footnoted reference to how much electricity would be needed to power pumping stations along the route of the pipeline that would link Canada’s oil sands region to Texas refineries.
Running at something less than full capacity, the pumping stations would not require as much electricity – and so tax power plants less – than originally reported.
The revised figures in the report add contours to the debate over the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline and show that the State Department is aware of the growing reliance of using rail to ship oil and gas. Moreover, a number of incidents in the last year have created greater awareness of the perils in using rail.
A CSX train spilled 50,000 gallons in an April 30, derailment in Lynchburg, Va., in which no one was hurt. That spill followed last year’s derailment in Quebec, which killed 47 people, according to the Daily Energy Dump archives. However, moving oil and gas by rail has become the go-to method of transportation as the Obama Administration stalls while trying to straddle the issue much to the dismay of supporters and to the enragement of Keystone XL foes.
The International Energy Agency estimates that demand for transportation infrastructure is emerging as a major driver of gas’s expanding role in the energy sectors of China and the United States, accounting for 10 percent of gas demand growth. In May the Philadelphia Inquirer had a good example of how the confluence of oil and gas exploration and the need to get it to markets is altering the economic landscape across the country.
A Federal Railroad Association report said more than two-thirds of railway accidents are related to human error. The report did not distinguish between freight or passenger service. The FRA estimates hauling goods by freight rail to be a $60 billion industry covering a 140,000 mile system moving more freight than any other freight rail system worldwide and providing 221,000 jobs.
While the revised estimates was released on a Friday, a day when Washington often dumps reports it finds to be inconvenient as people look ahead to a weekend of leisure and away from day-to-day business, neither supporters nor foes of the controversial project failed to notice. Keystone proponents said that the risk of more deaths strengthens the case in favor of the project, according to the New York Times.
Environmental groups said that the report highlighted the danger inherent in developing the oil sands at all.
State Department officials said the updated information was not likely to influence any decision. Secretary of State John Kerry has sought opinions from several cabinet officials in his deliberations, and State Department officials say he will consider the pipeline’s impact on the environment, economy and national security, among other issues, before making a recommendation to Mr. Obama.
Shawn Howard, a spokesman for TransCanada, the company that hopes to build the pipeline, said the updated report “reaffirms what we have been saying for years: The safest, most environmentally responsible and affordable way to move oil to the markets where they are needed is a pipeline.”
On May 22, Russ Girling of TransCanada confirmed his company is in talks with customers about increasing the use of freight trains for shipping crude oil and gas to the United States.
In January the State Department concluded the Keystone Pipeline would have a neutral impact on carbon emissions, according to HotAir’s Erika Johnsen, who also posted on the Friday report here.
The report, known as an errata sheet, here, is the Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone XL Project. The data obtained for the analysis comes from the FRA. The rail incident analysis is based on nation-wide statistics for Class I freight rail data obtained from the FRA database, the report said. Class I railroads are those with annual carrier operating revenues of $250 million or more.
This latest report does nothing to make President Obama’s job of deciding one way or another easier. His indecision has perhaps given pipeline opponents false hope, because the polls and common sense say it’s the right thing is to construct it. At the same time he has crippled his party’s chances of carrying senate and house seats in states affected by all of the above factors.That’s why the odds of him doing anything until after the November election are low.
