[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.