On heels of President's speech on reducing demand for oil, 100 landowners in Keystone XL pathway say pipeline too risky

Today, one hundred landowners from Montana to Texas wrote a letter to the President and Secretary Clinton objecting to a proposal for a “massive tar sands pipeline slicing down America’s heartland” that would increase our reliance on the dirtiest oil on the planet.  The permit for the pipeline is pending at the Department of State as objections to the safety and impact of the pipeline proposal grows.  The landowners appear to have an ally in the President, who – in a speech to students at Georgetown University yesterday – made it clear that the U.S. must work to reduce its reliance on all oil.    

At the start of his speech he stated:

The United States of America cannot afford to bet our long-term prosperity, our long-term security on a resource that will eventually run out, and even before it runs out will get more and more expensive to extract from the ground.  We can’t afford it when the costs to our economy, our country, and our planet are so high.  Not when your generation needs us to get this right. 

Although the President suggested that in the near term, getting oil from Canada and other western hemisphere partners was preferable, he did not call for increasing U.S. reliance on tar sands or oil shale (another controversial high carbon oil) either within or outside of the U.S. – half of Canadian oil comes from sources other than tar sands.  

Instead the President continued that, “…our best opportunities to enhance our energy security can be found in our own backyard -- because we boast one critical, renewable resource the rest of the world cannot match: American ingenuity.”  And here is the key paragraph:

So the only way for America's energy supply to be truly secure is by permanently reducing our dependence on oil. We’re going to have to find ways to boost our efficiency so we use less oil. We’ve got to discover and produce cleaner, renewable sources of energy that also produce less carbon pollution, which is threatening our climate. And we’ve got to do it quickly. 

It is clear to us that the goals embraced in these statements would be severely undercut by a decision to permit the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, in spite of Canadian industry efforts to spin this differently.  That pipeline would bring close to 1 million barrels a day of toxic tar sands oil from Alberta to the Texas Gulf, increasing our dependence for decades on oil and on oil that emits more greenhouse gases than any other oil on the planet.  The pipeline would cross sensitive land and water resources, including one of the nation’s largest aquifers, the Ogallala.  Tar sands crude must be transported under high temperatures and pressures, and its highly corrosive qualities make it more likely that the pipeline will rupture.  Landowners have been concerned for some time regarding pipeline safety and damage to their water supplies.  In the letter they said, “a toxic spill would devastate our watersheds…”.

The landowners also expressed concern about the bullying tactics they claim the pipeline company, TransCanada, has employed to force landowners to sell their land.  According to the landowners, TransCanada has threatened eminent domain to secure settlements even though they have yet to secure a permit to build the pipeline.  The landowners stated that they should not be forced to sell their land to a foreign company and put their families and way of life at risk: “If this project goes forward, foreign companies win, and American lives, health, and water supplies lose.”  The letter concludes, “…we are the ones who must live with tar sands running through our property. Please hear our concerns and protect our families and property.” 

This letter follows a letter released last week by twenty-five mayors from across the country who wrote to the Secretary expressing their concern that the proposed tar sands pipeline would undercut their ability to reduce demand for oil, move to cleaner fuels and combat climate change.

The State Department is currently in the process of drafting a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement and the letter asks that the SEIS “inform landowners of the real risks to our health, safety and livelihood….”  That will require a much closer look than State has taken to date on the need for the pipeline, pipeline safety and the routing of the pipeline.  The State Department must take the time it needs to secure assurances from the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials and Safety Administration and EPA that this pipeline can be operated safely and if – like other tar sands pipelines – this one also spills, that it can be cleaned up.  Six months after the Kalamazoo River rupture in Northern Michigan, the river is still off limits and Enbridge continues to argue that it is not legally liable for damages to landowners.  This is not a promising record for tar sands pipelines and surely one that helped sparked today’s letter. 

We trust that the President’s call for 21st Century energy and reducing use of oil will help lay the groundwork for finding the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline unnecessary, too dangerous and out of sync with our new energy agenda. 

Credit: David Dodge, Pembina.org.  This is a photo of the Suncor tar sands Millenium mine.  According to Pembina, over 4,500 square kilometers of land has been leased for mines like this.  The President talked about a "gold standard" for oil and gas development. This kind of mining leaves land completely transformed and devoid of its former ecological values.

For more on why tar sands don't provide energy security, see:

Danielle Droitsch: http://www.pembina.org/blog/515

Lorne Stockman: http://priceofoil.org/tarsands-doesnot-address-energysecurity/