Keystone pipeline where is it

Crude oil. Natural gas. Environmental policy. Categories : Pages with broken file links Energy policy concepts and issues Environmental policy terms. Voter information What's on my ballot? Where do I vote? How do I register to vote? How do I request a ballot? When do I vote? When are polls open? Who Represents Me? Congress special elections Governors State executives State legislatures Ballot measures State judges Municipal officials School boards.

How do I update a page? Election results. Privacy policy About Ballotpedia Disclaimers Login. Induced jobs include jobs created to serve the direct employees of the pipeline or the indirect suppliers of the pipeline's construction. Examples include road construction crews or beef suppliers to nearby restaurants that serve construction workers. Sources : U. Energy and environmental news.

Environmental terms. Endangered species terms. Environmental policy by state. Endangered species policy. At peak capacity, the pipeline will deliver , barrels of oil per day. While the pipeline is initially carried U. TransCanada has been attempting to get a permit for the pipeline project for more than five years. Since the northern leg of the pipeline crosses international borders, TransCanada needs to obtain a Presidential Permit through the State Department for construction of the portion of the pipeline that goes from Canada to the U.

The northern segment, from Alberta to Texas, is the section that has run into several points of opposition. While the northern leg stalled, TransCanada went ahead on the southern leg. The line would cross through 16 counties in North and East Texas.

This map lays out the existing and proposed routes:. Some estimates have gone as high as ,, which is highly unlikely. Factors such as direct vs. The State Department released a report in March stating that the pipeline could directly or indirectly create up to 42, jobs, including 3, construction jobs.

Many critics of Keystone XL worry it will have harmful environmental impacts. The Sierra Club has said it opposes the specific use of tar sands, which is found in the deposits in Canada. The scientific name for tar sand is bitumen , a mixture of clay, sand, water, and oil that with modern technology can be refined into usable oil. Critics say that it is more corrosive than conventional oil. It is this corrosiveness that has some concerned about leaks in the pipeline.

For evidence against the transport of tar sands crude, environmentalists point to an event in May , when 21, gallons of oil leaked in North Dakota. This was also due to a faulty valve.

The State Department says the maximum amount of spillage in a worst-case-scenario of a Keystone Pipeline leak is 2. TransCanada points out that this is significantly smaller than the amount that escaped during the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The pipe was decades old. The pipeline is often compared to another one built by the Canadian energy company Enbridge, which also transports tar sands crude into the U. Despite her claim, Enbridge is not without heavy public scrutiny. Thousands of gallons of oil sands crude flowed into Talmadge Creek, a tributary of the Kalamazoo River.

In , more than two million comments urging a rejection of the pipeline were submitted to the U. Department of State during a day public comment period. But the groundswell of public protest was up against a formidable opponent—hundreds of millions spent on lobbying by the fossil fuel industry.

When industry-friendly politicians took charge of both congressional houses in January , their first order of business was to pass a bill to speed up approval of Keystone XL. That effort failed. One of the central arguments made by pipeline pushers was that tar sands expansion will move forward with or without Keystone XL. This has proved to be untrue. Dealing in tar sands oil is an expensive endeavor.

Indeed, moving crude by rail to the Gulf costs substantially more than moving it by pipe. For companies considering whether to invest in a long-lived tar sands project which could last for 50 years , access to cheap pipeline capacity plays a major role in the decision to move forward or not.

The oil industry lobbied hard to get KXL built by using false claims, political arm-twisting, and big bucks. When TC Energy said the pipeline would create nearly , jobs, a State Department report instead concluded the project would require fewer than 2, two-year construction jobs and that the number of full-time, permanent jobs would hover around 35 after construction.

Furthermore, we know that ambitious action on climate change—including investments in green energy alternatives—carries huge potential for job creation. Dirty energy lobbyists claimed developing tar sands would protect our national energy security and bring U.

But NRDC and its partners found the majority of Keystone XL oil would have been sent to markets overseas aided by a reversal of a ban on crude oil exports —and could have even led to higher prices at U. The decision echoed a seven-year State Department review process with EPA input that concluded the pipeline would fail to serve national interests. Upon entering office, President Trump—with his pro-polluter cabinet of fossil fuel advocates, billionaires, and bankers—quickly demonstrated that his priorities differed.

On his fourth day in office, Trump signed an executive order to allow Keystone XL to move forward. When that failed—thanks to a lawsuit brought by NRDC and other groups—Trump reissued the cross-border permit himself.

The Bakken oil boom drove a 75 percent increase in sexual assaults on women on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. And now, there are three Keystone XL man camps for 3, workers planned within 55 miles of her reservation in Montana, Cheek says. That's more than a third of the Fort Peck Reservation's population within a short drive in the sparsely populated region. Even though Keystone has been shut down, the close proximity makes her nervous.

Scalp them. If TC Energy decides to give up on the project, the company will cart away the work camps and salvage what scrap they can. TC Energy engineers have raised concerns about the safety of some of the pieces of pipe that have been prepositioned in yards along the route, sitting out in the elements for a decade now.

However, there is likely still some value in the roughly 48, tons of steel. But some pieces of the pump houses could remain in place.

Enbridge is now in the process of abandoning the Line 3 pipeline that has carried crude oil from Alberta to Wisconsin since the s, and the company plans to leave pump houses where they stand to use them as maintenance and storage depots.

TC Energy could make a similar decision. The company has not yet taken any action, however. As much as a pipeline is made up of steel welded together by hundreds of skilled workers, it is also a feat of legal wizardry.

Before the first shovelful of dirt can be dug, lawyers have to forge a path of easements that stretches from end to end, negotiating with every landowner along the way to establish a price and any extra terms in exchange for the right to use a strip of their property forever.

They own it forever. To build this pathway, companies try to work quickly and quietly, offering landowners up front the carrot of a sum, sometimes a tidy one— as much as six figures, but also as little as a few hundred dollars—and the stick of eminent domain if they resist. Jorde got involved in Keystone XL cases eleven years ago when he was approached by worried farmers and ranchers who wondered if there was another option.

He filed lawsuits on their behalf, which are still in active negotiation. Jorde does not expect that to change. The project was aborted last summer as the financial viability crumbled after numerous legal delays, and many landowners expected that their land would be released from the easements. The company has made plans to dismantle roads it had constructed and to abandon the partially constructed pipeline in place, but it is so far holding onto the easements.

The company could sit on them for decades to wait for the right political and economic moment, and it could even sell the easements to another company. Twenty years from now, am I going to be fighting this for the children and grandchildren of these landowners? All rights reserved.