The proposed Keystone XL pipeline project formed by the TransCanada oil company has suffered plenty of political fallout in the past couple of weeks. Obama, who is a supporter of clean energy, openly denied the oil giants proposal to expand the pipeline. In defense of the pipeline the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, also felt, “President Obama is destroying tens of thousands of American jobs and shipping American energy security to the Chinese. There’s really no other way to put it. The President is selling out American jobs for politics". Now I can see both sides of the argument from environmentalist and pro oil supporters. I myself find that I’m torn between the two sides; as a current sophomore in civil engineering I know that a society has certain needs to meet, while minimally impacting the environment as economically as possible. Often to meet these needs the economy and environment have to be interchanged to meet the problem at hand.
Having said all of that, environmental concern is an important topic. A civil engineer must find the best way at the time to get the job done for society. Many environmentalists fear a possible rupture in the pipeline will harm the country’s farmland. Now as far as engineering is concerned steel oil pipeline is among the safest and most economical transportation methods to date. According to the Association of Oil Pipelines there are 168,000 miles of liquid pipelines in the USA, and these are the "safest, economical and environmentally favorable way". So in my eyes there is no real environmental concern that’s any bigger than that of other pipelines throughout the United States. With all of that said there are still reasons for environmental concern, but the main things I want to leave everyone with is stop trying to think politically and try to think in terms of the positive and negative benefits.
I will have more posts on this topic to come in the following weeks.
How many miles does the proposal from TransCanada state would be added to the 168,000? Is there a website that provides data statistics about the safety record of the current 168,000 miles of liquid pipeline? That would be pretty interesting and nice information to have in my back pocket while listening to the debates going on about this topic.
ReplyDeleteSure Kate I'll post some more accurate data on the subject.
ReplyDeleteThe new project proposes approximately 1700 miles. Check out the company's website at http://www.transcanada.com/keystone.html its of course a one sided source, but describes the proposal pretty well. Also this link is from the U.S. DOT, they handle all of America's pipeline regulation and provided this information http://primis.phmsa.dot.gov/comm/reports/safety/AllPSI.html?nocache=6227.
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