Would you rather have a pipeline spill or a train derailment?

[cali]

Obviously neither, but oil pipelines suck. Rail transport of oil sucks. Our dependency on oil isn't going away anytime soon.

What's the solution?

The IAE says that rail incidents are more frequent but pipeline incidents spill considerably more oil. Rail accidents pose a greater risk to life.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/05/14/pipeline-oil-spills-rail-spills_n_3273725.html


More and more oil is being transported by rail and the route is often on dilapidated infrastructure near population centers. That's clearly not tenable.


http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-13/amid-u-dot-s-dot-oil-boom-railroads-are-beating-pipelines-in-crude-transport

http://www.pembina.org/blog/732

This is just bad news any which way you look at it.

[dawg]

1. This will be one of the rationales for approving Keystone XL.

Also, the fact that the trains use more energy and emit carbon of their own.

[cali]

2. Yes, and the Quebec derailment will also be used to push the Northeast Pipeline

and they'll have a lot to work with considering how much tar sand oil is now being transported by rail.

http://maine.sierraclub.org/Tar%20Sands/ExxonMobil-PMPL%20Factsheet%20FINAL%20October%202012.pdf

[SharonAnn]

16. Trains run through the middle of towns/cities. Pipelines usually don't.

Pipeline ruptures can cause much larger oil spills but fewer lives lost when they occur.

Long-term damage/illness/death would need to be factored in.

As a culture, we usually abhor sudden, unexpected deaths from industrial accidents. We often pay less attention to long-term results.

[cali]

17. Call it a Morton's Fork dilemma or

a catch-22 or a Hobson's Choice.

There is no good option. I don't think there's even a less bad option.

[pscot]

3. I'll take the Blow on the Head

[cali]

4. lol. I still love Monty Python.

I'll put you down for one train derailment.

[pscot]

5. Works for me

[Savannahmann]

6. I once read a piece, and I wish I could remember where.

The idea was to build berms around the pipeline, a channel to catch any spilled oil. This way, the spill would be localized, and contained before the people got there to begin clean up.

Yes, the spill would still be bad, but it would be localized to the area immediately surrounding the break in the pipeline. Also, since we have multiple hulls on our tankers now, why not double pipelines? A pipe within a larger pipe, that way if the interior one breaks, the oil is contained within the second pipe until it could be depressurized, drained, and repaired.

A lot of options on one hand. Trains on the other hand have the laws of physics to contend with. If a car derails, it could take a mile before the train is stopped. That means a mile worth of cars will be an accident in an accident. We've seen how tragic those can be, and you're right, they go through population centers, no chance to create containment berms or other containment efforts.

A town destroyed, and people dead. I say town destroyed, because there is little chance that the toxins will ever be leached out of the ground in our lifetimes.

[cali]

8. that is interesting. Of course, I don't know enough to know if something like that is viable

Maybe this is silly but I wonder if they could be lined?

And yes, Lac Megantic, a lovely town that I have had the pleasure of visiting is destroyed. In addition to the toxins in the ground, a lot of crude spilled into what was the very clean waters of the Chaudiere River which flows from Lac Megantic and which provided drinking water for a number of people.

The Chaudière River (French for "Cauldron" or "Boiler River&quot is a 185 kilometres (115 mi) long river with its source near the Town of Lac-Mégantic, in southeast Quebec, Canada. From its source Lake Megantic in the Estrie region, it runs northwards to flow into the St. Lawrence River opposite Quebec City. The river's drainage area is 6682 square kilometres, initially in the Appalachian Mountains, then in the low-lands of the St. Lawrence, and include 236 lakes covering 62 square kilometres and approximately 180,000 inhabitants. Its annual medium flow at the station of Saint-Lambert-de-Lauzon is 114 m³/s, varying from 11 m³/s (low water) to 470 m³/s (spring high water), with historical maximum of 1760 m³/s.

<snip>

The river's basin has nearly 50% of the faunal richness of Quebec, namely 330 out of 653 vertebrate species known in the province can be found here.

The river, and the 40 metres (130 ft) high Chaudière Falls which it passes over en route, are popular outdoor recreation areas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaudi%C3%A8re_River

We don't know yet whether this was tar sand oil.

[Savannahmann]

13. I don't know.

You're right of course, we're stuck with oil for at least another generation, perhaps two. We can reduce, but we can't eliminate the oil based economy anytime soon. We have improved safety of super-tankers by requiring that they have multiple hulls and isolated cells that reduce the probability of spills. I can't imagine that we would be unable to come up with similar safety features for pipelines. All that being said, I prefer pipelines to tankers, pipelines tend to run in uninhabited areas, and with precautions like we've discussed, the idea of berms, liners, or pipes around the pipes, to isolate and contain the inevitable accidents, we can reduce the impact of such accidents. We'll never eliminate them, but if we can reduce them to the point where the impact is highly localized, that is to say in an acre or two instead of an entire town, that would be an improvement.

I don't think we can totally eliminate the dangers, but I think we can reduce them to much less disastrous events. Exxon and the rest can surely afford them with only a minimal ding in their obscene profits, and it would save us all so much heartache and destruction.

That town is destroyed, uninhabitable for a generation or two. That river will never be the same. We can prevent it from happening again, but we must take reasonable action now, and continue to invest in the future.

Solar is not quite there, the conversion rate is not up to the level needed. Soon, perhaps another decade, or two, we'll see the transition to something more economically viable. Geothermal is limited in the geologic conditions that must be met. Wind, horrific deaths of many rare and some endangered birds happens far too often. Wave action is in it's infancy, and even so doesn't do much to help provide electrical power to the interiors. Hydroelectric displaces fish, and is again limited by geologic conditions that must be met. We could never set up hydroelectric on the Mississippi for example, no canyon's to dam up. A paddlewheel might produce some, but almost certainly not enough to justify it's expense.

I wish it wasn't so, but the reality is we're stuck with oil for now. We can take actions now to minimize the effects of future spills, but again, we must take the action now. The problem with oil dependence is not going to be solved by a magic bullet, but by years, possibly a generation, or two, of serious effort. We aren't one invention away from ending our dependence on oil, any more than we're one design away from ending the utility of the gasoline powered auto. I always wonder, why we don't get the advances in auto design that they have in Europe? The VW Blue Motion series for example gets more than 60 MPG. If you had that over a comparable Ford or Toyota, you would nearly double your miles per gallon, thereby cutting your individual use of oil in half. That is by the way, more than even the Prius gets, for a lot less money at the dealer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlueMotion

[laundry_queen]

7. Interesting little fact was

put on CBC yesterday. From 2011 to 2012 the amount of oil transported by rail in Canada increased eight-fold. Yes, you read that right. In 2012 rail transported *8* times the amount of oil it transported in 2011. Wonder how much it will increase for 2013.

[cali]

9. I'm quite sure the same holds true for U.S. rail transport of oil

http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=7270

[cali]

10. Does Canada train blast show danger of oil transport in US?

<snip>

Across the border in Maine, the tragedy is likely to turn up the volume on an existing debate about the safety of shipping crude oil through the state from Canada’s western petroleum region to New Brunswick’s coastal refineries.

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would move much of this heavy oil from Canada south through the US to Texas. Its backers say this means of transportation is safer than is freight transport. But it has been blocked, for now, by environmental concerns.

That means railroads continue to carry the bulk of this oil cargo. But Maine environmentalists aren’t happy about this, either. On June 27 six members of the protest group “350 Maine” were arrested in the south-central town of Fairfield for blocking railroad tracks with signs calling to “Stop Fracked Oil”.

Oil trains have been crossing Maine since May, 2012, according to the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram. Some have been involved in accidents that barely avoided environmental catastrophe.

<snip>

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2013/0707/Does-Canada-train-blast-show-danger-of-oil-transport-in-US

[suffragette]

11. Pipelines can also be dangerous

This explosion happened in Bellingham, WA.

http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=5468

At 3:25 p.m. on June 10, 1999, the Olympic Pipe Line Company was pumping gasoline thorough a 16-inch pipeline from a refinery in Ferndale, south to terminals in Seattle and Portland, when a pressure relief valve failed. The resulting pressure surge led to a catastrophic rupture in the line traversing Whatcom Falls Park, and sent 277,200 gallons of highly volatile gasoline into Hanna Creek and Whatcom Creek, which flows through downtown Bellingham into Bellingham Bay.
~~~

At 3:25 p.m. on June 10, 1999, the Olympic Pipe Line Company was pumping gasoline thorough a 16-inch pipeline from a refinery in Ferndale, south to terminals in Seattle and Portland, when a pressure relief valve failed. The resulting pressure surge led to a catastrophic rupture in the line traversing Whatcom Falls Park, and sent 277,200 gallons of highly volatile gasoline into Hanna Creek and Whatcom Creek, which flows through downtown Bellingham into Bellingham Bay.

~~~
The Bellingham Fire Department’s investigation determined that Wade King and Stephen Tsiorvas ignited the gasoline vapor from the ruptured pipeline when they inadvertently lit a butane fireplace lighter near the spill in Whatcom Falls Park. The boys had been using the lighter to set off fireworks outside the park earlier in the day. Bellingham Fire Chief Mike Leigh gave his view that the boys were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Boys Saved Bellingham

In a twist of fate, King and Tsiorvas became unwitting heroes. In a statement to the news media on June 18, 1999, Bellingham Mayor Mark Asmendson said, “The cause of the fire was the fuel released from the Olympic pipeline. The fact that it was ignited was inevitable. With the thousands and thousands of gallons of fuel that were proceeding down Whatcom Creek, had the ignition not taken place where it did and at the time it did, the damage to this community and the loss of life would have been far greater. These boys completely, without notice or any awareness, were involved in an action that ended up being heroic for the city of Bellingham.”

[Katashi_itto]

12. Is an alien invasion an option?

[cali]

14. depends on the aliens.

are they crude oil eating?

[jazzimov]

15. That's the issue I've been wrestling with -

when it comes to the Keystone pipeline, we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. Of course, the only solution is that we reduce our dependency on oil, but as you say that won''t happen anytime soon.

[cali]

18. I'm still wrestling with it. I live disturbingly close

to the proposed Exxon Enbridge Northeast Pipeline which has received little attention. It would run right thru the Northeast Kingdom where I live. This is a beautiful, but poor place and the economy has increasingly moved away from dairy farming and logging to eco-tourism and such endeavors as cheese making- where terroir is an important ingredient. (and skiing, of course)

From wik:

The Northeast Kingdom has been listed in the North American and international editions of "1,000 Places to See Before You Die", the New York Times best-selling book by Patricia Schultz. In 2006, the National Geographic Society named the Northeast Kingdom as the most desirable place to visit in the country and the ninth most desirable place to visit in the world.[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Kingdom

The thought of that pipeline fills me with terror, but I can't ignore the horrific event in Lac Megantic or the strong possibility that this will happen again, probably in the Northeast.

I like SavannahMan's suggestions, but that's not how they construct pipelines or repurpose them.

[FarCenter]

19. Pipelines, especially new ones, tend not to be routed through the center of communities

Large scale crude transporting pipelines are usually routed through rural areas. Pipelines distributing refined products and pipelines for natural gas distribution more often go through communities. There have been some pretty spectacular natural gas pipeline ruptures and fires.

Railways were built long ago, and industries were sited along railways and at railroad junctions. Cities grew up around the industries. So the danger of railroad transport is somewhat higher.

Things that don't burn and give off a lot of heat are not useful as fuels.