[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 88 (Monday, June 14, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H4400-H4402]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PERMISSION FOR MEMBER TO INCLUDE EXTRANEOUS MATERIAL
Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask for unanimous consent to
introduce an article into the Record.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Tennessee?
There was no objection.
Staying Hooked on a Dirty Fuel: Why Canadian Tar Sands Pipelines Are a
Bad Bet for the United States
(From the National Wildlife Federation Report)
CONFRONTING GLOBAL WARMING--INTRODUCTION
``America is addicted to oil.''
When President George W. Bush uttered these words in his
2006 State of the Union address, the former Texas oilman
acknowledged an imperative as important as any we can imagine
for the nation's future: breaking that crude addiction.
Our addiction to oil has come with an untenable cost: to
our national security, to our air and water, and to the
ability of our warming planet to support billions of human
lives. The recent Gulf Coast crisis, stemming from an
exploding offshore drilling rig, is just one more reason to
kick our prodigious habit. The United States consumes about
one quarter of the world's oil--around 20 million barrels a
day, and imports nearly two-thirds of that--about 13 million
barrels per day. For economic, political, military and
ecological reasons, the United States needs to address this
addiction--and beat it.
The burgeoning Canadian tar sands industry epitomizes the
depths of our addiction. Tar sands are a combination of clay,
sand, and bitumen found in great quantities under the boreal
forest of Alberta. By employing massive mining operations or
energy-intensive underground heating and production
techniques, energy companies produce a sludge-like heavy oil
that can be further refined into transportation fuels like
gasoline or diesel. As this report explains, expanding the
mining, processing and refining of these tar sands represents
a tragic choice for Canada, the United States, and the world.
British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon tragedy off the
Louisiana coast, which killed 11 men and is an unfolding
ecological disaster, is not an argument to expand Canadian
tar sands development, as some have argued. The Gulf Coast
catastrophe should instead propel us away from a future of
diminishing returns and higher costs from ``unconventional''
fossil fuel extraction, which includes tar sands, oil shale
and coal-to-liquids. Moving deeper into tar sands would be
taking the country down the wrong path--one that leads to an
inevitable dead-end.
The tar sands industry aims to create an extensive web of
pipelines to deliver increasing amounts of this Canadian tar
sands sludge to refineries in the United States. The U.S.
federal government has already approved two dedicated tar
sands pipelines and is poised to approve a third. The
Canadian company Enbridge's Alberta Clipper pipeline, running
from the U.S.-Canadian border in North Dakota, and across
Minnesota to Wisconsin, has already been completed.
TransCanada's Keystone I pipeline, which the State Department
approved in 2009, runs from Alberta to Illinois and on to
Oklahoma. TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL pipeline is the
third pipeline whose permit application is currently being
reviewed by the U.S. State Department. It would cut through
America's heartland, running nearly 2,000 miles from Alberta
down to Port Arthur, Texas, where the tar sands will be
refined into transportation fuels. Other, shorter pipelines
are envisioned to run to refineries around the country. This
network of tar sands pipelines would deliver even more
pollution to refineries where and the surrounding
communities, which are already experiencing health effects.
The proposed Keystone XL pipeline will traverse rivers and
carve across prairies, will flow on top of vital aquifers,
and threaten farmers, ranchers and wildlife when it leaks or
breaks, as it unquestionably will. Building this new pipeline
would institutionalize a demand for a product that we do not
need--especially if we seize the initiative to wean ourselves
from this a fuel that is sullying our coasts, tearing up our
heartland, and destroying the health and livelihoods of
communities. Current projections are that the new pipeline
would not even run close to capacity, raising the question of
why the U.S. is even considering this project.
Promoting the growth of the Canadian tar sands industry is
a dangerous and foolhardy development. This pipeline system
would virtually assure the destruction of swaths of one of
the world's most important forest ecosystems, produce lake-
sized reservoirs of toxic waste, import a thick, tarlike fuel
that will release vast quantities of toxic chemicals into our
air when it is refined in the U.S., and emit significantly
more global warming pollutants into the atmosphere than fuels
made from conventional oil. Communities that live near the
tar sands are already experiencing health problems linked to
the pollution, and dozens of wildlife species are at risk,
including millions of migrating cranes, swans, and songbirds.
If Keystone XL crosses our border, it will cut through
thousands of miles of sensitive habitat in America's
heartland. When the tar sands are refined in U.S. facilities,
the resulting pollution will foul our air and water.
We believe that the U.S. needs clean and renewable energy
solutions as we make the inevitable and necessary transition
to a post-oil world. Tar sands, as well as other inferior
fossil fuels like oil shale, simply should not be part of the
equation. Tar sands are a starkly inefficient, polluting,
ecologically disastrous and expensive way to power our cars
and trucks. Each tar sands pipeline our government approves
further increases our dependence on this dirty fuel. These
pipelines will become, in effect, a long-term, government-
approved pollution delivery system.
If we allow all these pipelines to be built, we are
essentially saying that we are willing to feed our oil habit,
even if we know it will harm our air, water, health,
prosperity and planet. Agreeing to increase our imports of
Canadian tar sands represents the worst kind of addictive
behavior: ``persistent compulsive use of a substance known by
the user to by physically, psychologically, or socially
harmful.''
Why then, we ask in this report, is the U.S. poised to
allow this expanded pipeline network that will lock our
country into an ongoing reliance on the dirtiest of fossil
fuels?
It is time to apply every ounce of American ingenuity to
finding a technological
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path to a future that relies far less on oil and other fossil
fuels and far more on sources of fuel that are renewable,
sustainable, and clean. By applying the talent and technology
of America's best minds and businesses, this country can
dramatically improve our environment and accelerate our move
beyond a dirty energy economy.
We have arrived at a critical crossroads that will
determine whether we can break free from this dependence--or
lash ourselves tighter to it. Building new pipelines to
import billions of barrels of dirty fuel from Canada is
taking the wrong path into increasingly hazardous terrain. We
should tell our elected leaders to reconsider.
big oil pushes for pipelines: transporting a dirty fuel that ravages
alberta's forests and waters
tar sands development
An aerial view of the area around Fort McMurray, Alberta,
provides a stark portrait of an addiction. The Athabasca
River, snaking through a region once marked by unending
vistas of glowing green conifers and populated by woodland
caribou, moose, bears and lynx, now demarcates ground zero
for what is arguably the most destructive peacetime
industrial activity in the history of mankind.
Tar sands development has transformed a landscape of boreal
forest and peat lands into a vast oil sacrifice zone. On
either side of the river, a series of giant open pit mines,
belching processing facilities, and poisonous tailings ponds
now line the floodplains and wetlands. The giant toxic
tailings ponds have grown large enough to see from space.
Even more troubling, the industrial activity is poised to
spread across the landscape like blight. If all the current
Canadian tar sands leases are exploited, development is
slated to encompass an area the size of New York and New
Jersey combined.
The Canadian tar sands industry is, by almost any measure,
one of the most wasteful and polluting industries humanity
has ever invented. Over the past ten years, commercial tar
sands production became increasingly profitable because of
rising oil prices and massive infrastructure construction
that accelerated the development's expanding reach. In
pursuit of profits that increased with the scaled-up
production, energy companies have torn up a province,
released countless gallons of toxic sludge into waterways,
emitted hundreds of millions of tons of global warming
pollutants into the atmosphere, and produced billions of
barrels of viscous, heavy oil that requires vast amounts of
energy to transport and refine into a transportation fuel.
EXTRACTING BITUMEN
Locked in underground pockets of sand, clay and water, tar
sands contain bitumen, which is a heavy, black viscous oil
that can be extracted, upgraded, refined, and turned into
fuel. The Canadian Energy Research Institute estimates that
these tar sands contain 1.7 trillion barrels of heavy crude,
of which approximately 173 billion barrels are recoverable.
About 20 percent of Alberta's tar sands deposit is close
enough to the surface to be dug up using conventional open
pit mining techniques. Using this method, the forest is
clear-cut and giant open pit mines carve the layers of tar
sands from the earth. These tar sands are trucked to
facilities where they are heated into a liquid, and the
bitumen is separated from the sand and clay. This process
requires substantial amounts of water and energy, and
leaves behind a number of toxic byproducts.
Another technique, known as in situ production, will be
used to target the other 80 percent of tar sands deposits,
located deeper in the ground. In situ production requires
companies to insert pipes into the ground, which are filled
with steam to heat up the tar sands and liquify the bitumen.
This liquid bitumen is then pumped to the surface much like
conventional oil. Although this technique does not result in
the same wholesale habitat destruction as strip mines,
industry claims that in situ mining is a ``solution'' for tar
sands environmental problems is overstated. This process
requires substantially more energy than conventional mining,
leaving a much larger carbon footprint. In situ mining also
fragments the landscape with roads and pumping stations,
requires large amounts of water, and still leaves toxic
tailings ponds during the upgrading process.
Both open pit mining and in situ processes require systems
of roads, pads, industrial facilities and tailings ponds that
all contribute to the fragmentation and destruction of the
boreal forest. The tailings ponds--which are more like giant
toxic lakes filled with pollutants like benzene, cyanide, and
mercury--stretch across the landscape, threatening human
health and wildlife.
THREATENING DOWNRIVER COMMUNITIES
Scientists already have catalogued human health problems
among the First Nations people who live downriver. Studies
have raised alarms about increased cancer rates and
autoimmune diseases. In the Fort Chipewyan First Nation,
where subsistence hunting and fishing is still prevalent,
hunters say they have noticed big changes in the game they
harvest-including the fact that moose livers are enlarged and
white-spotted. Water from the Athabasca River, their main
water source, now leaves brown residue in the pot when they
boil it. Fish they depend on are contaminated with high
levels of mercury and toxic cancer-causing chemicals.
Because the communities in the vicinity of the mining sites
are small, there has been relatively little monitoring of how
much the industrial activity has affected human and wildlife
health. What is clear is that the process of extracting,
upgrading, and refining tar sands requires a suite of
chemicals and produces toxic byproducts.
DELIVERY TO THE U.S.
Much the tar sands upgrading to date has taken place in
Alberta, but the refining capacity is not high enough for the
projected increase in production. That is why the tar sands
industry is proposing pipelines to the U.S.: to bring the
unrefined heavy crude to refineries in the U.S.
Today, approximately 60 percent of Canadian tar sands fuel
is exported to the U.S. Our nation currently imports about
800,000 barrels of this fuel a day, and some project that
this could increase fivefold if all the planned pipelines are
constructed, world oil supply from conventional oil dwindles,
and global demand intensifies.
In Canada, concern and opposition has been rising as the
ecological fallout from tar sands production becomes more
visible. If the U.S. continues its voracious oil habit and
builds these pipelines to support it, we will be contributing
to this Canadian calamity for many years to come.
poisoned habitat: wildlife in the crosshairs
A DESTRUCTIVE BUSINESS
The video footage is heartbreaking: a mallard drake,
flapping its wings in muck and beak dripping black gunk,
barely keeping afloat in oil sludge. No, not Alaska after the
infamous Exxon Valdez spill, or the Gulf Coast wetlands after
the BP explosion. It is the result of ``normal'' tar sands
development in Alberta.
Scientists are only beginning to understand the extent of
the impacts of Alberta tar sands production on the fish,
waterfowl, and forest animals that live in the remote boreal
forest that has become the hub of industrial tar sands
production. Habitat destruction and fragmentation is
expanding rapidly, and even energy companies acknowledge that
they are effectively destroying habitat as they go. In a
recent report by Cambridge Energy Research Associates, the
authors quote the energy giant Shell describing the impacts
in an application for a mine expansion: ``Effectively, a
complete loss of soil and terrain, terrestrial vegetation,
wetlands and forest resources, wildlife and biodiversity
happens for this area for the period of operations.''
This kind of large-scale habitat destruction raises even
larger concerns, because there is so much at stake in this
fecund northern wilderness.
The surrounding forest is home to the full complement of
wildlife any sportsman would imagine living in the Canadian
wilderness: bears, wolves, lynx, and important herds of
woodland caribou. The Athabasca River is part of a vital
nesting and staging ground for migratory waterfowl, many of
which winter in the continental U.S. The Canadian boreal
forest provides breeding, nesting or migration stops for more
than 300 species of birds--including several species of
cranes, shorebirds, and more than a million inland birds.
FULL IMPACTS UNKNOWN
Scientists know very little about the cumulative impacts of
tar sands development, says Canadian ecologist Kevin Timoney,
because the Canadian government, provincial authorities, and
energy companies have not conducted adequate monitoring and
testing. Timoney however, has begun documenting a series of
harmful effects to wildlife from habitat fragmentation, toxic
exposures, and other threats to wildlife.
Some of these effects have gained public notice. In 2008,
1,600 ducks perished when they landed in a tar sands mine
tailings pond operated by Syncrude. Originally, the company
downplayed the numbers, and it took several years and a
prosecution to bring the extent of the damage to light. A
lawsuit is pending against Syncrude.
Timoney estimates that even 1,600 substantially
underestimates bird mortality from this event--and many
others that remain undocumented. In an article published in
the Open Conservation Biology Journal, Timoney laid out a
disturbing case that tar sands development has led to a
permanent loss of at least 58,000 birds--and possibly as many
as 400,000.
The Syncrude tailings pond deaths were the result of the
birds becoming mired in oil, despite companies' efforts to
shoo birds away from their toxic tailings ponds using noise
cannons and scarecrows. The Cambridge Energy Research Report
states that, ``the surface layer of bitumen found on most
tailings ponds is an acute threat to wildlife.''
Timoney says there are other dangers as well. He and others
have documented at least 43 other bird species--waterfowl and
shore birds, birds of prey and gulls--that have died from tar
sands-related development. Timoney also made a Freedom of
Information and Protection of Privacy request of the Alberta
Sustainable Resources Development, which disclosed that 27
black bears, 67 deer, 31 red foxes, 21 coyotes and
unspecified numbers of moose, muskrats, beavers, voles,
martens, wolves and bats had also perished on tar sands
operations between 2000 and 2008.
Even more disturbing, Timoney discovered that those
reported numbers came from the energy companies themselves,
suggesting an under-reporting of some significance. ``The
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numbers of dead animals reported to government,'' he wrote,
``underestimated true mortality because they were derived
from ad hoc reporting by companies rather than from a
scientifically valid and statistically robust sampling
design.''
In another study, Timoney analyzed data from government and
industry sources that revealed strong evidence of chemical
contamination in the Athabasca River. Specifically, the
levels of known cancer-causing chemicals were as high as in
industrial zones in the United States. Elevated levels of
mercury and other heavy metals were also present. A
government report from the Regional Aquatics Monitoring
Program determined that more than seven percent of river fish
showed growth abnormalities, which Timoney says is ``high.''
an expanding threat
There is every reason to believe this problem will only
worsen. According to Environmental Defense Canada, tar sands
tailings ponds already have a surface area of 50 square
miles, twice the size of Manhattan. These contaminated
tailings ponds have already leaked into the nearby waterways,
and projections are they will triple in size.
This spells more trouble for wildlife, especially migrating
birds. According to Colleen Cassady St. Clair and Robert
Ronconi from the University of Alberta's Faculty of Science,
``spring migration is a particular problem in northeastern
Alberta, when the warm-water waste from oil sands mines are
the only open water--the natural bodies are still frozen.
When waterfowl land in these ponds, they may ingest oil and
their plumage may become oiled with waste bitumen,
potentially preventing birds from flying or leading to lost
insulation and death from hypothermia.''
Even though there has been very little study of the effects
of tar sands development on wildlife, the indications are
that this development is releasing a potentially devastating
onslaught on Canadian and internationally-migrating animals.
As ecologist Timoney put it: ``The effects of these
pollutants on ecosystem and public health deserve immediate
and systematic study. Projected tripling of tar sands
activities over the next decade may result in unacceptably
large and unforeseen impacts on biodiversity, ecosystem
function, and public health. The attention of the world's
scientific community is urgently needed.''
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