Keystone XL Pipeline: Riskier Than TransCanada Claims?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


TransCanada, the energy company that wants to build a 1,661-mile pipeline from Alberta, Canada, down to Texas, keeps insisting that its project would be “among the safest pipelines in North America.” But a new report from a University of Nebraska professor indicates that the worst-case spills could be a lot more devastating than the company has predicted, and there could be a lot more of them.

The Keystone XL has already drawn criticism for several reasons: It would bring some of the world’s dirtiest oil into the US, it would cross a massive aquifer that provides water to much of the Great Plains, and it’s up for consideration at a time when Americans have been hearing an awful lot about oil spills. There have already been numerous leaks on TransCanada’s original Keystone pipeline, and this month’s Yellowstone River spill certainly hasn’t made the Keystone XL sound any better.

TransCanada cliams that we can expect 11 significant spills— or spills totaling more than 50 barrels of oil each—on the pipeline in the next 50 years. But John Stansbury, an associate professor of environmental and water resources engineering at the University of Nebraska, has caluculated that TransCanada’s presumptions are probably way off. Stansbury figures that it’s probably more like 91, given historical data, known information about this type of pipeline, and the type of oil it would transport.

Stansbury also found that the amount of time it would take to turn off the pipeline would probably be about two hours, though the company claims it can have it shut down in 11.5 minutes. By comparison, it took 12 hours to shut down the Enbridge pipeline in Michigan when it spilled last summer; the Yellowstone spill took nearly an hour.

The report also included some shocking figures about how bad a worst-case scenario spill could be: A spill in the sandhills above the Ogallala Aquifer could dump as much as 180,000 barrels, tainting the vast water supply in the region. A spill on the Yellowstone River, which this pipeline would also cross, could release 140,000 barrels—considerably more than the spill earlier this month.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate