New standards recommended for tar sands oil pipelines

NPR : The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is recommending new standards for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline project, which would carry tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to the US. Because of the 2010 Enbridge spill in Michigan’s Kalamazoo River, which is still being cleaned up, the EPA has determined that a tar sands oil spill can be more harmful than a conventional oil spill and may require different methods and equipment to clean up. From that spill, the agency learned that tar sands oil tends to sink to the bottom of bodies of water and doesn’t biodegrade. Because the oil is also much stickier than either conventional crude or refined oil, it is nearly impossible to clean from surfaces such as rocks. In addition, to ease the flow of the tar sands oil through the pipeline, benzene or other petroleum-based products are added, which during a spill can be slowly released back into the environment and pose a hazard. TransCanada, the company that will build the Keystone pipeline, says it has already included 57 new safeguards. However, Stephen Hamilton of Michigan State University points out that even with safeguards in place to protect against a potential spill, the production of tar sands oil remains a huge environmental risk because of the greater amount of greenhouse gases emitted in its production compared with that of conventional oil.