[eh78ssxv2f]

I always wonder what's the best way to assess environmental impact of the oil pipeline. Sure, it's going to leak at some point, and create a mess that may never get cleaned up. However, is it safer (or energy efficient) than carrying the oil on trains/trucks?

[Tloewald]

As far as I understand it, the pipeline being fought over symbolically rather than for reasons that make analytic sense. If there's an environmental argument, it's that the pipeline will make using shale sands oil from Canada cheaper which is a Bad Thing because we use more stuff when it's cheaper.

The correct approach would be to make fees and penalties for environmental impact higher (carbon tax, EPA able to levy big fines for oil spills, etc.) and then let the market figure it out rather than fight like crazy over specific cases.

Now, as to the subject of the pipeline running through native american territory because white people were (justifiably) worried about their drinking water if it ran through their watershed -- that's a whole different issue.

[dragonwriter]

> As far as I understand it, the pipeline being fought over symbolically rather than for reasons that make analytic sense. If there's an environmental argument, it's that the pipeline will make using shale sands oil from Canada cheaper which is a Bad Thing because we use more stuff when it's cheaper.

Your last argument suggests you are conflating aspects of the Dakota Access Pipeline (which is for domestic shale oil from a particular field) with the Keystone XL pipeline (which is for Canadian oil sands oil).

The environmental argument about Dakota access is that the pipeline, which was rerouted from its original route because of an unacceptable threat to a mostly White community that it would have crossed just upstream of the water supply of, and it's been rerouted to run just upstream of the water supply of the Standing Rock reservation.

Which is why the protesters style themselves "Water Protectors".

> Now, as to the subject of the pipeline running through native american territory because white people were (justifiably) worried about their drinking water if it ran through their watershed -- that's a whole different issue.

No, it's actually the whole issue with Dakota Access. Keystone XL is a whole different pipeline.

[Tloewald]

You're right, I was conflating the two. So yes it's mainly about whose water is at risk.

[jadell]

Existing pipelines within a few hundred miles of this site have recently leaked into water supplies. This is not symbolic; it's about where the tribe gets their water from.

[FireBeyond]

This is very valid. But I think there's _also_ an important symbolic goal here.

"This pipeline was moved because local communities feared the risk to the water supply. So the company felt it was appropriate to move it into the tribal community area."

"Water risk to white people? No no no. Water risk to Native communities? Well, we can live with that."

[criddell]

> "Water risk to white people? No no no. Water risk to Native communities? Well, we can live with that."

I don't think the Army Corps is that corrupt. I'm guessing it went more like "Water risk to 50,000 people or water risk to 5,000 people?"

This history of the US government relations with native people makes any object assessment suspect though.

[dragonwriter]

> I don't think the Army Corps is that corrupt.

I'm not sure the Army Corps was involved until after the reroute, and, in any case, it had publicly announced that it would not approve the easement on the current route because of the issues raised relating to Standing Rock and was conducting environmental impact reviews of alternative routes prior to the Trump executive order directing approval of the current route, so, yes, I'll agree that the Army Corps of Engineers itself is not indicated to be the source of the problem.

[charia]

It also has to do with the fact that local communities had a significant population in comparison to the native american m tribes who lived in the area.

[Declanomous]

It's a good we got out in front of that issue ahead of time by killing Native Americans and then moving them away from their ancestral homeland.

[lostlogin]

credit where credit is due - I blame the British empire. NZ, Australia and other former colonies have done it as well, getting slightly less vicious and slight more manipulative with time. Dodgy treaties with locals etc.

[benjaminjackman]

> As far as I understand it, the pipeline being fought over symbolically rather than for reasons that make analytic sense. If there's an environmental argument, it's that the pipeline will make using shale sands oil from Canada cheaper which is a Bad Thing because we use more stuff when it's cheaper. > The correct approach would be to make fees and penalties for environmental impact higher (carbon tax, EPA able to levy big fines for oil spills, etc.) and then let the market figure it out rather than fight like crazy over specific cases.

I think you are totally correct, except that the `correct approach` only works if you have a functioning and independent (of the regulated) regulatory system able to assess the impact, and levy taxes, fees, and fines to price in all the externalities.

Defunding / freezing these agencies certainly doesn't help their ability to function, and funding the campaigns of (or challengers in the primaries of if need be) the regulators as well as having sympathetic people placed at the top of the regulatory enforcement agencies destroys independence.

[breatheoften]

There are regulations proposed in Congress to make it illegal for regulators to consider results from all studies of ecological effects after "one off" events such as the Gulf Oil spill. I presume it also applies to smaller events like a pipeline leak.

The stated motivation for this banning of research is because these studies are not "repeatable". This seems like a pretty blatant attack on the potential for the entities which benefited from the activity that led to the accident to be held accountable.

With a rule like this on the horizon, there's no way I'd be willing to allow any oil company to pursue any construction with any risk of an ecological effect anywhere near my back yard.

[wheelerwj]

why don't you go ask the people of Flint how symbolic their water supply is?

Maybe they can provide some concrete analysis of tainted water supplies.

[jtuente]

Considering they had a completely adequate water supply until their local government decided to switch to using the Flint River directly [1], I don't think this is a remotely accurate comparison.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis#Switching_t...

[wheelerwj]

really? you don't see a correlation between tainted river water in Flint and future tained water in ND?

nothing? ok.

[jtuente]

Considering that all 3 fracking locations that are even remotely close to Flint are all downstream, yeah, I see 0 correlation.

[masonic]

  as to the subject of the pipeline running through native american territory...  that's a whole different issue.

Especially since the pipeline will not enter Native American territory at any point.

[aaronbrethorst]

There are people who live in the pipeline's projected path and their water will be poisoned if/when the pipeline leaks. That's not symbolism, that's life and death.

[cloakandswagger]

The debate over the pipelines seems to be largely symbolic. The oil is going to get pulled out of the oilsands and transported either way, it only seems logical (and probably more ecological) to use a giant pipe instead of trucks/trains.

[beat]

The debate is social. This is going through tribal lands because the tribes are poor and legally limited. They can't defend themselves. If you tried to run a pipeline under the water supply for 10,000 rich white people, it'd die before the first inch of pipe was laid. The very land it's going under is just a tiny fragment of low-value land left to the tribes, after multiple gunpoint-driven treaties left a tiny "reservation".

Power. It's about power. And power is tied to race. It's morally disgusting, and a lot of this talk is just misdirection, avoiding the real, valid source of anger and rebellion.

[JumpCrisscross]

> This is going through tribal lands because the tribes are poor and legally limited

The pipeline runs close to, not "through tribal lands" [1]. The environmental concern is fair. If my neighbor builds a 300 dB speaker on their property, I have a reasonable claim to damages.

The "sacred lands" and threat to "way of life" claims, however, seem disingenuous. It amounts to laying claims based on hypotheticals on someone else's property.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Access_Pipeline#Tribal_...

[beat]

"Disingenuous" is unfair. But symbolic, certainly. What this is really about, what I'm getting at, is that this is being done because no one actually gives a shit about the tribes, except the tribes. The state is more or less free to steal from the tribes, or endanger them. If anything of value is found in whatever land they have left, it's taken from them.

So this is symbolism. Standing in front of a bulldozer and saying "NO" is all they have left.

[cloakandswagger]

"Disingenuous" seems fair to me. The land is suddenly sacred and inviolable when someone asks to build a pipeline near it (not on it), but the massive casinos these tribes erect on their "sacred" land isn't an issue.

I would be more amenable to the tribes if they were honest and upfront about what they're doing: a form of collective bargaining to maximize compensation from the government.

[beat]

Now that is disingenuous. There's no casino there. Not all land is sacred, but some is. Casinos aren't built on land that might face internal opposition within a tribe.

[zo1]

This has absolutely nothing to do with race. We would probably see LESS outrage if this was happening in a rural white community. But somehow because this is in "Indian lands" that are sacred we all claim "race" and "evil white people" again. Please stop infantilising these native American individuals, they are people.

[beat]

Please stop stealing from them.

[VickBear]

It isn't going through tribal lands.

[beat]

Perhaps not. But it's going through their water.

[ZoeZoeBee]

You mean to tell me there aren't pipelines running under water supplies? I'd suggest you look at a map.

http://www.pipeline101.org/where-are-pipelines-located

[spraak]

Water pollution from leaks, as pointed out elsewhere in the comments here, is more than symbolism

[criddell]

Sure, but if you look at it purely from the numbers, the situation in ND isn't terribly alarming.

Look at this map:

https://www.eia.gov/pub/oil_gas/natural_gas/analysis_publica...

Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana must have no drinking water by now, right?

The protest has garnered the support that it has mostly because it's a Native American community (and I for one do support them - they've been screwed over too many times in the past).

[r00fus]

The debate is because the pipeline got rerouted - was going to threaten a mostly-white area, now will threaten a native american reserveation.

The "symbolism" is - if you're poor or under-represented you will be poisoned. Why did we even create reservations if we can poison them at will for the profits of the greedy?

[wheelerwj]

two wrongs make a right?

[robertfw]

What would be more ecological is to leave the stuff in the ground in the first place. This is not a symbolic fight.

[ars]

You are arguing the wrong side. What would be more ecological is using less oil.

You can't block supply while demand is there, because the demand will be filled by someone, only this time by someone with less oversight [from you].

You want to make a difference add more "good" supply, or reduce demand.

Bad supply will automatically go down if you do this, with no extra effort.

[wutbrodo]

Supply and demand don't only flow in one direction. Oil demand is absolutely responsive to price (and thus supply), in the form of energy users turning to alternative sources of energy, focusing more on energy efficient machinery, using less energy (driving less when the cost of driving rises).

[ars]

You are assuming no one else would sell them oil. This is incorrect.

The is currently enough oil supply for everyone. Reducing/removing an oil source just means the oil comes from somewhere else, but it does NOT reduce oil consumption.

[wutbrodo]

No, I'm not. But I am assuming that access to the source we're talking about would have an appreciable effect on global supply. This isn't the first time this has happened: the plummet in oil prices in the last few years is in large part attributed to an increase in supply of US oil production. I don't remember the details off the top of my head but I recall reading that the drop in prices has also been accompanied by a halting of the momentum of consumer interest in things like fuel efficiency.

[Scirra_Tom]

Extract less oil = prices go up = more incentive to look for other alternatives.

So if you want to make a difference, yes, limiting the supply is one way to do it by not extracting it in the first place.

[ars]

> more incentive to look for other alternatives.

Which are still oil, just from elsewhere. The Saudis are quite happy to sell you as much oil as you want.

> limiting the supply is one way to do it by not extracting it in the first place.

I covered that - all that would happen is people would get the oil from elsewhere.

You can only induce people to pump less oil by increasing supply of other forms of energy, or by reducing demand.

If you are going to pump oil at least do it where people actually care about the environment - don't make things so hard you just push production to places with less oversight.

[cloakandswagger]

This only works if you're confident you can force every nation on earth to stop or slow down extraction from their oil reserves. Let me assure you, the resultant wars would be far more damaging to the environment than otherwise.

[jeffdavis]

But that's not a proposal on the table, so it is a symbolic fight.

[maverick_iceman]

Ya, it would be more ecological if we leave modern civilization and go back to our hunter gatherer days.

[jcoffland]

Or if we just slow down a bit.

[analog31]

In my view, each method needs to be justified on its own merits, since there is no a priori entitlement to extract and ship the oil in the first place. There's also no good justification for burdening the public with the risk of the pipeline, just because it replaces a greater risk somewhere else.

If the pipeline is safe, prove it. If the trains and trucks are safe, prove it. If neither, then leave the oil in the ground.

[ars]

> If neither, then leave the oil in the ground.

Nothing is ever perfectly safe. Nothing you do ever has no impact. Everything in life is about tradeoffs, and the right thing to do is pick the best one. NOT wait for the perfect one!

[jcoffland]

Waiting generally has a very low environmental impact. Higher energy costs and a slower economy are not necessarily bad. Unbridled growth is not the only option.

[ars]

> Higher energy costs and a slower economy are not necessarily bad.

Said no poor person ever. You can't just bury your head in the sand and pretend your policies/idea don't impact anyone.

If you understand that and choose to do so anyway because you feel it's better, fine, at least you understand that you are making a tradeoff. But just pretending there is no harm is disingenuous.

[jessaustin]

Higher energy costs and a slower economy are not necessarily bad

...said no politician, ever. This proposition may even be true, but it's a terrible argument.

[cmdrfred]

>Higher energy costs and a slower economy are not necessarily bad

Are you going to be the person who tells families around the country that their grandmother had to freeze to death this winter for the greater good?

How about the young couple that just had a kid and is suffering from stagnant wages. Are you going to come around and tell them to "tough it out" to prevent a catastrophic event a century or two from now?

All the while the smokestacks in the 3rd world just keep growing, and thanks to the lack of demand in the US they can consume even more petroleum products (and in a far less efficient manner) due to the lower cost globally.

[masonic]

Delays in, and cancellations of, nuclear projects for political reasons have had a huge environmental impact, resulting in billions of tons of CO2 release that would not have happened (counting just one pollutant).

(Also, premature decommissioning for political reasons, (e.g. Rancho Seco)

[disantlor]

their point is that it's a false choice. perhaps those resources are better spent developing energy technology that does not require that we accept a certain amount of "unavoidable" environmental damage. it is avoidable, but perhaps a completely free market does not encode that effectively

[jeffdavis]

Roads/rails already exist, as do standards about safe transport of oil by train/truck.

What are you suggesting, exactly? That each locality can block whatever transport goes through it? Maybe put up a tollbooth?

[barney54]

Pipelines and trains and trucks have already been proven to be safe. There are hundreds of thousands of miles of pipelines in the U.S. today. The EIS showed this new pipeline would be safe.

[cmdrfred]

> If neither, then leave the oil in the ground.

Coal isn't safe either, nor nuclear, hell even with solar someone might fall off a roof during maintenance or installation and the panels can be toxic. What perfectly safe energy source do you propose?

[danielvf]

Trucks are the worst in every way, by a lot.

Comparing rail to pipelines, with the same amount of oil moved the same distance, trains cost 2x more and use more energy. Most years trains spill less per oil moved than pipelines, which is their one win.

Unfortunately, when trains have accidents, they tend to be both in towns and have fire. 45 people died in a single Canadain oil train accident in 2013.

Pipelines have great record in terms of human safety.

[protomyth]

North Dakota has some recent oil spills with trains.

http://articles.latimes.com/2014/jan/13/nation/la-na-nn-nort...

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/north-dakota-town-evacuated-afte...

[wtf_is_up]

Yes, it is approximately 4x "safer" to transport oil via pipeline than rail. And many times more safe than using trucks. In addition, most pipeline failures occur at compressor stations and processing stations, instead of along the pipeline itself. [1]

[1]: https://www.fraserinstitute.org/research/safety-transportati...

[Symmetry]

It's certainly safer for the environment in general in terms of oil spills but the communities that would suffer from truck or trail spills are different from the communities that would suffer from pipeline spills. And since the former don't get to sue but the later do there's a certain pressure against pipelines in general.

But on the other hand pipelines are more cost effective than other means of transport. That means the oil gets to market more cheaply and that will tend to decrease the price of oil, meaning more is used, meaning more CO2 in the air. Raising the price by taxing oil would mean that we would get the double benefit of less oil use and government money to pay down the debt or whatever but that's harder to do politically than just block pipelines.

[JimboOmega]

But more oil is used to transport the oil (in trucks/trains), so I think that increases CO2 usage overall.

Also higher prices mean more oil is exctracted - and sometimes more is used to do the extraction (IE, more marginal EROEI projects are undertaken)

[Symmetry]

It's higher profit for extracting that would mean that more oil would be extracted, not higher prices to the consumer. Higher transport prices decrease ROI.

You have a point about transport CO2 use but I'd expect that would use a small amount proportionally.

[wang_li]

It used to be that oil would just seep to the surface. That generally stopped once we figured out we could usefully burn it and began draining the easily access sources. I wonder which is "worse" what there was prior to petroleum becoming a commodity or the pipeline leaks that happen now.

There are well known ocean seeps that have been ongoing for tens or hundreds of thousands of years[1]:

>Researchers have found that natural offshore seeps near Goleta, California, alone have leaked up to 25 tons of oil each day – for the last several hundred thousand years.

1. http://aoghs.org/offshore-history/california-oil-seeps/

[socialentp]

The difference is that on the scale of tens or hundreds of thousands of years, wildlife populations have a chance to adapt or relocate. We are causing oil leaks in areas that have been historically relatively pristine, resulting in severe damage to sensitive ecosystems.

[beat]

Not in the middle of the water supply for 10,000 people.

[rm_-rf_slash]

Pipelines are much safer than trains or trucks at delivering oil or LNG. That subject is not up for debate.

The problem is that when you build this infrastructure, it comes along with long-term financial contracts. Which is to say, if you build it, you're gonna use it.

As a result, it discourages investments in other energy infrastructure projects. Once the pipeline is in, we are stuck with it until it ages out of usefulness or if green energy radically undercuts the profitability of fossil fuels such that the pipeline is abandoned. But because of those long-term financial contracts, the likelihood of the pipeline being abandoned is far less than it would have been if trucks were used instead.

Small short-to-medium-term risk, larger long-term risk.

[clock_tower]

Once installed, pipelines can be -- and are -- used to transport any fluid; they're not limited to oil and natural gas. They can also be used for other purposes: the Williams Companies ran fiber-optic cable through decommissioned pipelines in the 1990s, drastically improving coast-to-coast network connectivity.

Also, remember the article from yesterday about how utilities are building solar plants to insulate themselves from swings in the price of oil and natural gas. The current round of pipeline building and the current round of solar-building are complementary; both are about moving away from coal.

Wind has arrived, solar is arriving, and geothermal and pumped hydro are probably next. The future of the world's energy supply looks pretty bright, and it looks likely that the Saudis were right back in the 1970s when they predicted that the oil age wouldn't end when we ran out of oil, just as how the stone age didn't end when we ran out of stones.

[tzs]

> Pipelines are much safer than trains or trucks at delivering oil or LNG.

What does it mean to be safer in this context? Pipelines have fewer spills than trucks, but a truck spill is generally limited to one truck's worth of oil whereas a pipe can spill a huge amount.

[tzs]

> Pipelines are much safer than trains or trucks at delivering oil or LNG. That subject is not up for debate.

Safer by what measure? Pipelines have fewer spills than trucks, but a truck spill is generally limited to one truck's worth of oil whereas a pipe can spill a huge amount. (I'm not sure where trains fit in. A train carries more oil than a truck, but train accidents won't always break every car).

[nightski]

Modern pipelines have sensors that are monitored continuously and leaks can be detected incredibly quick.

The recent leak in ND was a little worse than normal because it was during a rough blizzard which made it rather difficult to respond quickly.

[cjf101]

Those sensors do fail, however.

http://globalnews.ca/news/2117570/alberta-oil-spill-when-fai... (2015)

Notice how many failure reports are not the sensor, but are due to humans checking up on the pipeline. The conditions these pipelines are installed in can be pretty hostile to equipment and monitoring. Going by those numbers, I'd say sensor systems have a ways to go.

The debate that usually goes around is that pipelines fail less often, but their failures tend to spill more oil, in more sensitive areas.

The other dimension, that isn't often talked about, is which transport system has the best chance to improve. Despite their current shortcomings, I think that a system that is dedicated to one job (moving dangerous fluids) has a better safety ceiling than shared systems, like trains and roads.

[nightski]

I definitely agree. I think instead of spending so much time debating over pipeline vs. rail/truck we should be focusing on how to make our pipelines better and safer. I mean sensor failure detection is pretty common in all the embedded systems I have worked on.

[LungButta]

It is indeed up for debate. I would like to see sources backing that up. I can find sources saying just the opposite. I think it comes down to what you mean by safe. Safer for humans in the immediate area of an accident, safer for the environment, safer for humans as a whole. I would indeed argue that is loses in the later two.

I agree with the rest of your comments.

[gr3yh47]

>Pipelines are much safer than trains or trucks at delivering oil or LNG. That subject is not up for debate.

source(s)?

[cmdrfred]

A pipeline is 4.5 times safer.

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/research/safety-transportati...

[LungButta]

I think we need better sources than research coming from a conservative/libertarian think tank.

[cryoshon]

... we should be resisting any and all modalities of future fossil fuel exploitation. who cares if pipelines are "safer" when we know that there is no planet-safe way to burn the oil they carry. if pipelines are the most efficient way to move the resource of oil, we need to be preventing their deployment because oil will kill us if we let it.

we're in the midgame of climate change... better to take radical action to prevent the worst possible end case.

[Neliquat]

So shoot yourself in the foot and hope to fly? No, the tech will be ready when its ready. The production tech is not ready. Free electricity will always win in a free market, so there is literally no radical fight needed, or wanted. If you actually want influence, buy teslas, build solar panel building machines, refine electric motor and storage tech. Shutting down the infrastructure that gets you there is asinine and counter productive.

[KirinDave]

Or we could decline to expand our oil industry further, on the grounds that the long term economics of the industry are a poor prospect and it makes little sense to continue encouraging its growth in the US.

This project really doesn't have many positive externalities for its host nation. For an administration that's "America First" they're been very quiet about who actually benefits. Some few Americans do.

[VickBear]

Can you actually explain how it doesn't benefit USA? All the studies I read explained the economic impact it will have on the states it goes through after completion.

[snuxoll]

Sure, it'll benefit executives at Energy Transfer Partners, Phillips 66, etc. since they'll have an easy way to transfer oil to be shipped overseas. The states as a whole? Please. The number of permanent jobs this pipeline will create are pathetically low, a couple of people to man an oil field and a couple dozen to deal with the pipeline itself.

Eventually there's going to be less reliance on the USA for refined petrol as more nations move towards renewable energy sources, so the market will eventually correct itself I suppose - but I don't see any reason to help the oil companies make one last push to milk it for all they can before the money dries up.

[VickBear]

You are forgetting about taxes going to states. A lot of indirect economic boom surfaces as well. Check out the economic studies for the pipeline.

[JumpCrisscross]

> is it safer (or energy efficient) than carrying the oil on trains/trucks?

In essence, pipelines spill more across fewer locations while trains spill less across more locations:

Our calculation implies 0.09 incidents and 26 barrels released per 1 billion barrel-miles of crude oil transported by pipeline during a 2004-12 period. Comparing that with figures for rail, we quantify the risk of a train incident to be 6-times higher than that of a pipeline, while pipelines spill 3-times more per 1 billion barrel-miles of crude oil transported, over the 2004-12 period.

[1] http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication...

[jadell]

I'm all for "socializing the risk" of oil. If more people had the same worries about their water being contaminated, maybe more people would start to demand investment in cleaner sources of energy. As it is, most people don't live near pipelines or water sources that could be contaminated by them, and so the risk is largely abstract.

[ika_]

Yes. Trains and trucks use up more fuel and are much more dangerous than pipelines. Look up "oil train derailment". Oil trains can and do explode when they derail, and they pass through population centers.

One reason existing pipelines have a lot of problems today is because a lot of them are very old, which makes them much more dangerous than any pipeline built today. This is a good article about that: http://insideenergy.org/2014/08/01/half-century-old-pipeline...

A brand new pipeline would be less dangerous than the existing pipeline infrastructure we use today.