Major Spill Points Up Pipeline Risk
A
s the battle over the proposed Keystone XL
branded it with one of the agency’s worst ratings.
pipeline rages on, the extreme threat posed
“Among the errors and omissions in the State
by pumping hundreds of thousands of barrels
Department review is the mind-boggling assertion
a day of corrosive tar sands through America’s heartland
that this massive new pipeline would not drive
is no longer a matter of conjecture for one small
significantly more product ion of tar sands oil and
town in Arkansas. More than 200,000 gallons of
thus increase global warming pollution,” says Swift.
heavy tar sands
Producing tar sands
crude spilled in
crude is so energy-
Mayflower, a suburb
intensive that it
north of Little Rock,
generates three times
after the Pegasus
as much global warm
pipeline operated
ing pollution as the
by ExxonMobil
production of conven
ruptured in March,
tional crude. That is
transforming
especially alarming
backyards into toxic
given that the level
black swamps and
of heat-trapping
forcing residents
carbon dioxide in
to evacuate.
our atmosphere
The Keystone XL An ExxonMobil pipeline spilled 200,000 gallons in Arkansas.
once-unthinkable
far larger than Pegasus, snaking 2,000 miles from
barrier of 400 parts per million for the first time in at
Canada to the Gulf of Mexico and carrying more
least three million years. At this rate humanity could
than 800,000 barrels of toxic tar sands oil a day.
reach 450 ppm in just 20 years, at which point, most
“Pipelines operating at temperatures above 100
climate scientists agree, there will be catastrophic and
degrees have been found to spill up to 23 times more
irreversible consequences. “If we want to make the
often than conventional pipelines due to external
climate better we have to stop making it worse,” says
corrosion,” says Anthony Swift, an attorney with
NRDC President Frances Beinecke. “We can’t afford
NRDC’s International Program. “Keystone XL
more climate-wrecking projects like this one.”
would be one of those pipelines.”
NRDC continues to be at the forefront of the fight
Because the Keystone XL would cross the border
against the Keystone XL. In April, our Members and
between the United States and Canada, the State
online activists were part of a nationwide protest that
Department is charged with evaluating its risk and
flooded the State Department with one million
determining whether it would serve the national
messages challenging its woefully inadequate review
interest. Yet the department’s most recent assessment
of the pipeline. President Obama is expected to make
has received the equivalent of a failing grade from
a final decision about the Keystone XL by this fall.
the Environmental Protection Agency, which
Take action at: www.stoptar.org
Oil spill © EPA
pipeline would be
recently broke the
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