In a classic Friday afternoon data dump, the State Department just issued a long-awaited, and very long (2,000 pages) draft report assessing the impact of the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline.
At first glance, it’s pretty much right down the middle: the 875-mile pipeline doesn’t pose any new significant risks to the environment; nor will it make or break the future of the North American oil industry. With or without the Keystone, the Canadian oil that it is meant to move will get developed anyway. Killing it will not in turn kill the development of the Canadian oil sands.
The draft takes a thorough analysis of the project’s potential environmental impact, running through a litany of potential hazards: soil erosion, water contamination, threats to endangered species. The report doesn’t discount these risks, but it does lay out a handful of precautions that can be taken to avoid many of them. As for carbon emissions, building the Keystone will produce about 240,000 metric tons of CO2, and operating it would result in about 3 million metric tons of CO2 each year, or about the same amount as 626,000 passenger vehicles produce each year.
Overall, the report does not raise any huge environmental red flags, much to the chagrin, perhaps, of noted environmentalist and anti-Keystone crusader Bill McKibbon, the subject of a lengthy profile in this week’s Businessweek magazine. Nor though, does the State Dept. find huge economic benefits in the project. It estimates that building the Keystone would create about 42,000 jobs, translating to about $2 billion in earnings. Only 35 of those jobs would be permanent, mostly people who would inspect, maintain, and repair.
Here’s the big takeaway, though: if the Keystone never happens, Canadian oil-sands prodcution will only fall by about 0.4 to 0.6 percent of total by 2030. In the 15 months since President Obama delayed approval of the Keystone, the oil industry in North America has gotten especially creative at moving oil by rail, truck, and barge. That’s not going to stop. But here’s the thing that many don’t understand—those alternative modes of transportation are far more carbon intensive, and expensive, than moving oil through a pipeline. Plus, the rate of spillage tends to be higher for rail and barge than by pipeline.
