Petroleum Coke: The Coal Hiding in the Tar Sands

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air pollution, Alberta, Atmosphere, bitumen, Canada, Canadian Tar Sands, carbon dioxide, China, climate change, coal, destruction, environmental catastrophe, environmental disaster, EU, European Union, exports, forests, GOP, increase, Keystone XL, Keystone XL Pipeline, Koch Brothers, lobbyists, oil, Oxbow Carbon, Oxbow Corporation, Petcoke, PetKoch, Petroleum Coke, Republicans, Super-PACS, tar sands oil, U.S, U.S. State Department, United States

The Canadian tar sands have been called the “most environmentally destructive project on earth”, with good reason. Extracting tar sands bitumen from under the boreal forests of Alberta, Canada requires huge amounts of energy and water. It has cleared vast tracts of forest, left scars on the land that are visible from space and threatened the health and livelihoods of indigenous First Nations communities across the region.

It is a well established fact that full exploitation of the tar sands is a grave threat to the climate. Emissions from tar sands extraction and upgrading are between 3.2 and 4.5 times higher than the equivalent emissions from conventional oil produced in North America.On a lifecycle basis, the average gallon of tar sands bitumen derived fuel has between 14 and 37 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than the average gallon of fuel from conventional oil.

But as bad as these impacts already are, existing analyses of the impacts of tar sands fail to account for a byproduct of the process that is a major source of climate change causing carbon emissions: petroleum coke – known as petcoke. Petcoke is the coal hiding in North America’s tar sands oil boom.

Petcoke is like coal, but dirtier. Petcoke looks and acts like coal, but it has even higher carbon emissions than already carbon-intensive coal.

• On a per-unit of energy basis petcoke emits 5 to 10 percent more carbon dioxide than coal.
• A ton of petcoke yields on average 53.6 percent more CO2 than a ton of coal.
• The proven tar sands reserves of Canada will yield roughly 5 billion tons of petcoke – enough to fully fuel 111 U.S. coal plants to 2050.
• Because it is considered a refinery byproduct, petcoke emissions are not included in most assessments of the climate impact of tar sands or conventional oil production and consumption. Thus the climate impact of oil production is being consistently undercounted.

Petcoke in the tar sands is turning American refineries into coal factories.

• There is 24 percent more CO2 embedded in a barrel of tar sands bitumen than in a barrel of light oil.
• 15 to 30 percent of a barrel of tar sands bitumen can end up as petcoke, depending on the upgrading and refining process used.
• Of 134 operating U.S. refineries in 2012, 59 are equipped to produce petcoke.
• U.S. refineries produced over 61.5 million tons of petcoke in 2011 – enough to fuel 50 average U.S. coal plants each year.
• In 2011, over 60 percent of U.S petcoke production was exported.

Keystone XL will fuel five coal plants and thus emit 13% more CO2 than the U.S. State Department has previously considered.

• Nine of the refineries close to the southern terminus of Keystone XL have nearly 30 percent of U.S. petcoke production capacity, over 50,000 tons a day.
• The petcoke produced from the Keystone XL pipeline would fuel 5 coal plants and produce 16.6 million metric tons of CO2 each year.
• These petcoke emissions have been excluded from State Department emissions estimates for the Keystone XL pipeline.
• Including these emissions raises the total annual emissions of the pipeline by 13% above the State Department’s calculations.

Cheap petcoke helps the coal industry.

• As a refinery byproduct, petcoke is “priced to move”, selling at roughly a 25 percent discount to conventional coal.
• Rising petcoke production associated with tar sands and heavy oil production is helping to make coal fired power generation dirtier and cheaper – globally.
• From January 2011 to September 2012, the United States exported over 8.6 million tons of petcoke to China, most of which was likely burnt in coal-fired power plants.

“PetKoch”: The largest global petcoke trader in the world is Florida based Oxbow Corporation, owned by William Koch – the brother of Charles and David Koch.

• Oxbow Carbon has donated $4.25 million to GOP super PACs, making it the one of the largest corporate donors to super PACs.
• Oxbow also spent over $1.3 million on lobbyists in 2012.

To date, the impacts of petcoke on the local and global environment have not been considered by regulatory bodies in assessing the impacts of the tar sands. Petcoke’s full impacts must be considered by the European Union in its debate on the Fuel Quality Directive, by the U.S. State Department in its consideration of the climate impacts of the Keystone XL pipeline, and by Canadian, American, and European governments in tar sands policies across the board.

Increasing petcoke use is a clear result of the increasing production of tar sands bitumen. Petcoke is a seldom discussed yet highly important aspect of the full impacts of tar sands production. Factored into the equation, petcoke puts another strong nail in the coffin of any rational argument for the further exploitation of the tar sands.

Source:  http://priceofoil.org/2013/01/17/petroleum-coke-the-coal-hiding-in-the-tar-sands/

 

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Average 250 Pipeline Accidents Each Year, Billions Spent on Property Damage! (Oil Spill Map)

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Alberta, Alberta Tar Sands, Arkansas, Athabasca oil sands, bitumen, BP, Canada, Canadian Pacific Railway, Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, crude oil, Enbridge, environmental catastrophe, environmental disaster, Exxon-Mobile, Gulf of Mexico, Kalamazoo River, Keystone Pipeline, Keystone XL, Keystone XL Pipeline, Mayflower, mayflower arkansas, Michigan, oil, oil industry, oil spills, Pegasus Pipeline, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, pollution, Property, railroad, Rivers, Shell, Tar Sands, Tar Sands Pipelines, TransCanada, transportation, U.S, United States, widespread damage

If only this were milk there would be no need to cry.

Cleanup efforts are currently underway in four separate oil spills that have occurred in the last ten days.

On March 27th, a train carrying Canadian tar sands dilbit jumped the rails in rural Minnesota spilling an estimated 30,000 gallons of black gold onto the countryside.

Two days later a pipeline ruptured in the town of Mayflower, Arkansas, sending a river of Albertan tar sands crude gurgling down residential streets. And news is just breaking about a Shell oil spill that occurred the same day in Texas that dumped an estimated 700 barrels, including at least 60 barrels of oil into a waterway that leads to the Gulf of Mexico (stay tuned for more on that).

This week a Canadian Pacific freight train loaded with oil derailed, spilling its cargo over the Northwest Ontario countryside. Originally reported as a leak of 600 liters, the CBC reported on Thursday that the estimated volume of the spill has increased to 63,000 liters.

The accelerating expansion of Alberta’s tar sands has North America’s current pipeline infrastructure maxed out and, as a result, oil companies have been searching for an alternative way to move their product to market. As lobbying efforts around the stymied Keystone XL and Northern Gateway pipelines intensify, oil companies have been quietly loading their toxic cargo onto freight trains.

There has been a marked boost in the rail transport of crude in the last three years as new extraction techniques increase production in the tar sands. According to Reuters, “U.S. trains carried 233,800 carloads of crude oil in 2012, more than double the 65,800 carloads transported in 2011 and dwarfing the 29,600 in 2010, according to figures from the Association of American Railroads.”

Meanwhile the Canadian Pacific Railway’s crude oil volumes have skyrocketed from 2,800 carloads in 2010 to a staggering 53,000 last year. The company hopes to increase that number to over 70,000 this year.

Most, if not all, advocates of pipeline transportation will argue that the growing use of rail transport emphasizes the urgent need for pipelines. Pipelines are commonly touted as a more reliable mode of fuel transport than rail.

Pipelines, as the story goes, are safe.

Unfortunately for pipeline proponents, last week’s pipeline rupture in Arkansas is no anomaly in the history of US pipelines. In fact, pipelines have made a pretty consistent mess throughout the States for the last 20 years. One thing has changed, however: those messes are getting more expensive to clean up.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) is responsible for reporting and recording all “significant pipeline incidents” which are all incidents exceeding the cost of $50,000 (in 1984 dollars).

In terms of property damage PHMSA records indicate that the 20-year average (1993-2012) cost of significant pipeline incidents is over 318 million dollars, the 10-year average (2003-2012) cost is over 494 million dollars the 5-year average (2008-2012) cost is over 545 million dollars and the 3-year average (2010-2012) cost is over 662 million dollars.

The cost of cleaning up after pipelines just keeps getting more expensive.

Over the last 20 years, pipeline incidents have caused over $6.3 billion in property damages. On average during this time period there were more than 250 pipeline incidents per year, without a single year where that number dropped below 220. During that time, more than 2.5 million barrels of hazardous liquids were spilled and little more than half of those spilled amounts were recovered in cleanup efforts.

One of the factors contributing to the cost of cleanup is the introduction of Alberta’s diluted bitumen to southern markets (The most expensive year on record is 2010 when Enbridge spilled 3.3 million liters or 877,000 gallons of dilbit into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River).

Companies eager to move Canadian dilbit south to refineries and export facilities have been jimmying an aging pipeline infrastructure to handle the more corrosive substance and there is currently no federal oversight to monitor this process.

Pipeline Network by Petroleum GeoGraphics Corp. on NRP.

Two decades of pipeline spills, mapped by the New York Times.

ExxonMobil’s sixty-five-year-old Pegasus pipeline that ruptured last week was one such retrofitted line. Built in the late 1940s, the old winged horse of a pipeline was reversed in 2006 in order to carry Canadian dilbit to the Gulf Coast via Illinois at a 50 percent increased capacity. The burst line sent a river of at least 84,000 gallons of dilbit running down residential streets in Mayflower and into nearby wetlands.

The exact cause of the pipeline rupture is still unknown.

Many of the major pipeline operators – like Exxon, Enbridge and TransCanada – have been cited for lax inspections, shoddy emergency preparedness, and ineffective spill management and response. Both Exxon and Enbridge have been told their actions in the immediate hours after pipeline ruptures have made spills worse than necessary.

NPR reports “more than half of the nation’s pipelines were built before 1970. More than 2.5 million miles of pipelines run underground throughout the country.”

Debbie Hersman with the National Transportation Safety Board told NPR, “100 percent of the accidents that we’ve investigated were completely preventable.” In many cases companies performed inspections and discovered cracks and corrosion in the line but did not perform repairs before accidents occurred.

In an interview with Reuters, John Stephenson, vice president and portfolio manager at First Asset Investment Management in Toronto described these events as “not good for producers…not good for Canadian oil going south…not good for Keystone.”

But added, “the reality is this oil is going to make it south of the border, quite likely by rail or one of the other pipelines across the Canadian-US border, so I see it as a short-term hiccup at worst.”

Yet even a cursory glance at the history of pipeline accidents in the US shows what is happening in Arkansas is no ‘hiccup’ and will bear no ‘short-term’ consequences. At least, not for the residents of Mayflower.

Source:  http://desmog.ca/2013/04/05/average-250-pipeline-accidents-each-year-billions-spent-property-damage

 

Breaking: Enbridge Tar Sands Oil Pipeline Spills in Minnesota!

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Alberta, Alberta Clipper, Alberta Tar Sands, Canada, DeSmog, Edmonton, Enbridge, Indigenous Environmental Network, Kalamazoo River, Keystone Pipeline, Minnesota, National Energy Board, oil, Oil spill, safety violations, tar sands oil, Tar Sands Pipelines, U.S. Coast Guard, Viking, Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin

UPDATES COMING PENDING FURTHER INFORMATION. Enbridge‘s Line 2 **Line 67 tar sands** pipeline has leaked an estimated 600 gallons of crude oil at its pump station near Viking, Minnesota. Line 2 was built in 1956 and has a history of spills. Regulators ordered Enbridge to reduce its Line 2 operating pressure in October 2010 following the company’s Kalamazoo River tar sands spill.

The Enbridge Viking pump station also receives oil from the Alberta Clipper (aka Line 67 pipeline) that carries heavy crude oil and tar sands bitumen from the Alberta tar sands region south from Hardisty to Superior, Wisconsin and refineries in the midwestern United States. It is unclear whether the product that spilled was tar sands-derived diluted bitumen. According to a link provided by Enbridge subsequent to this story’s original posting, Line 2 begins in Edmonton and carries petroleum products, including crude oil, from Edmonton to Superior. Both lines pass through the Viking pump station.

The U.S. Coast Guard National Response Center website reports the details of the incident, which happened last night:
“1044848”,”1044848″,”1044848″,”INCIDENT”,”23-APR-2013 17:09″,”THE CALLER REPORTED THAT A LEAK ON A PRESSURE TRANSMITTER RESULTED IN A RELEASE OF CRUDE OIL.”,”FIXED”,”EQUIPMENT FAILURE”,”23-APR-2013 15:45″,”18060 203TH ST NW”,”MN”,”VIKING”,”MARSHALL”,”ENBRIDGE ENERGY”,”SOIL”,”OIL: CRUDE”

DeSmog was alerted by the Indigenous Environmental Network, which is en route to the spill site to gather more information. Stay tuned for updates to this post below.

**This story originally reported that Enbridge Line 67 tar sands pipeline suffered the leak, but Enbridge subsequently confirmed the spill was on Line 2. DeSmog regrets the error.**

Enbridge was warned earlier this month by the National Energy Board that the company “is not abiding by federal safety standards at 117 pumping stations along its extensive crude oil network in Canada, putting the safety of the public at risk.”

The Line 2 leak has stopped and Enbridge is working on cleanup operations now. The spill does not appear to have reached water. For more details, visit http://enbridgeus.com/Viking/.Similar to the controversial Keystone XL pipeline battle, Enbridge is currently seeking a Presidential Permit from President Barack Obama to expand the capacity of the Alberta Clipper Line 67 where it crosses the international border. The Alberta Clipper pipeline currently transports approximately 450,000 bpd of crude oil from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin to the midwestern U.S.

The Calgary Herald reported in June 2011 about Line 2 (emphasis added):

“Enbridge’s Line 6 pipeline, linking Griffith, Ind. to Sarnia, Ont., was shut down temporarily by American regulators last July following a rupture and spillage of more than 3 million litres of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River near Marshall, Mich. Three months later, the National Energy Board, which was monitoring the U.S. investigation, quietly ordered a 20 per cent pressure reduction on Enbridge’s Line 2 Canadian pipeline, which links Edmonton to Superior, Wis., along sections that contained pre-1970s flash-welded pipe.”

DeSmog has confirmed at least two previous spills on Line 2, one in Minnesota in2004 that spilled over 1,000 barrels and another in North Dakota in 2010 that spilled over 3,000 barrels.

Reuters reported in 2011 (emphasis added):

“Canadian regulators ordered Enbridge Inc (ENB.TO) to cut pressure on its 440,000 barrel per day Line 2 last October after raising concerns that the company might not be able to detect cracks in the oil pipeline. The National Energy Board’s order remains in effect. It restricts the pipeline, which runs from Edmonton, Alberta, to Superior, Wisconsin, to operating at 80 percent of normal pressure, according to documents provided by the regulator. The board said it was concerned that Enbridge might not be able to consistently identify cracks in pipes laid before the 1970s using flash-welding techniques.”

Here is the incident report on the Line 2 spill on April 23, 2013, pasted directly from the Coast Guard National Response Center website:

NATIONAL RESPONSE CENTER 1-800-424-8802
*** For Public Use ***
Information released to a third party shall comply with any
applicable federal and/or state Freedom of Information and Privacy Laws

Incident Report # 1044848

INCIDENT DESCRIPTION

*Report taken at 17:09 on 23-APR-13
Incident Type: FIXED
Incident Cause: EQUIPMENT FAILURE
Affected Area:
The incident was discovered on 23-APR-13 at 15:45 local time.
Affected Medium: SOIL
____________________________________________________________________________
SUSPECTED RESPONSIBLE PARTY
Organization:         ENBRIDGE ENERGY
BEMIBJI, MN

Type of Organization: PRIVATE ENTERPRISE
____________________________________________________________________________
INCIDENT LOCATION
18060 203TH ST NW County: MARSHALL
City: VIKING State: MN

____________________________________________________________________________
RELEASED MATERIAL(S)
CHRIS Code: OIL    Official Material Name: OIL: CRUDE
Also Known As:
Qty Released: 600 GALLON(S)
________________________________________________________________________
DESCRIPTION OF INCIDENT
THE CALLER REPORTED THAT A LEAK ON A PRESSURE TRANSMITTER RESULTED IN A RELEASE OF  CRUDE OIL.
____________________________________________________________________________
INCIDENT DETAILS
Package: N/A
Building ID:
Type of Fixed Object: OTHER
Power Generating Facility: NO
Generating Capacity:
Type of Fuel:
NPDES:
NPDES Compliance: UNKNOWN
____________________________________________________________________________
DAMAGES
Fire Involved: NO   Fire Extinguished: UNKNOWN
INJURIES:     NO   Hospitalized:      Empl/Crew:      Passenger:
FATALITIES:    NO   Empl/Crew:      Passenger:      Occupant:
EVACUATIONS:   NO   Who Evacuated:      Radius/Area:
Damages:   NO
Length of  Direction of
Closure Type  Description of Closure  Closure  Closure
Air:
N
Major  Artery:
Road:   N
N
Waterway:   N
Track:   N
Passengers Transferred: NO
Environmental Impact: UNKNOWN
Media Interest: NONE  Community Impact due to Material:
____________________________________________________________________________
REMEDIAL ACTIONS
CLEAN UP UNDERWAY
Release Secured: YES
Release Rate:
Estimated Release Duration:
____________________________________________________________________________
WEATHER
Weather: CLEAR, ºF
____________________________________________________________________________
ADDITIONAL AGENCIES NOTIFIED
Federal:
State/Local:
State/Local On Scene:
State Agency Number:
____________________________________________________________________________
NOTIFICATIONS BY NRC
ATLANTIC STRIKE TEAM (MAIN OFFICE)
23-APR-13  17:14
CGIS RAO ST. LOUIS (COMMAND CENTER)
23-APR-13  17:14
DOT CRISIS MANAGEMENT CENTER (MAIN OFFICE)
23-APR-13  17:14
U.S. EPA V (MAIN OFFICE)
23-APR-13  17:15
MN BUREAU OF CRIMINAL APPREHENSION (OPERATIONS CENTER)
23-APR-13  17:14
MN DEPT OF HEALTH (MAIN OFFICE)
23-APR-13  17:14
MN U.S. ATTORNEY’S OFFICE (MAIN OFFICE)
23-APR-13  17:14
NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE COORD CTR (MAIN OFFICE)
23-APR-13  17:14
NOAA RPTS FOR MN (MAIN OFFICE)
23-APR-13  17:14
NATIONAL RESPONSE CENTER HQ (AUTOMATIC REPORTS)
23-APR-13  17:14
DOI/OEPC DENVER (MAIN OFFICE)
23-APR-13  17:14
USCG DISTRICT 8 (MAIN OFFICE)
23-APR-13  17:14
____________________________________________________________________________
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

___________________________________________________________________________
*** END INCIDENT REPORT #   1044848  ***

Source:  http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/04/24/another-pipeline-leak-enbridge-alberta-clipper-line-67-leaking-tar-sands-bitumen