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The number of dead from Quebec’s Lac-Mégantic tragic rail accident are still being counted, and yet both sides in the oil pipeline debate are using the event to bolster their agendas. Environmentalists are arguing it’s another wake-up call that oil is bad for the planet, while pipeline proponents maintain that the incident proves that pipelines are safer than rail and projects like Keystone XL should be approved.
The real wake-up call is that the clash between the two worldviews is leading to a lot of poor decisions. Oil companies are being driven to jump on the rail bandwagon — despite mounting evidence that it’s less safe. Environmentalists refuse to let go of totally unrealistic expectations that the world must get off its oil addiction.
Their activism is stalling the approval of heavy-oil pipelines and pushing oil into trains, trucks and barges. Politicians caught in the middle are avoiding making reasonable decisions out of fear of political blowback — see Barack Obama’s latest twist on Keystone XL, which now has to pass a new test about whether it will have a “net” impact on climate change.
With pipeline capacity in North America subjected to rigorous environmental assessment — and failing to keep up with surging oil production from tight-oil discoveries and increasing production from Alberta’s oil sands — oil shipments by rail have mushroomed.
To be sure, some of the mismatch has to do with pipeline companies being unable to build pipelines fast enough to carry all the new oil. But a big part of the blame goes to anti-oil-sands campaigns targeting Canadian projects like Keystone XL and Northern Gateway, while ignoring the surge in railway shipments.
The Keystone XL pipeline continues to wait for a presidential permit after the longest regulatory review in the history of the United States. Were it operational today — sourcing oil from the oil sands as well as from the Bakken field in North Dakota — chances are there would have been no need for 50,000 barrels of crude from North Dakota to move at great cost across the continent to Irving Oil’s 300,000-barrel-per-day New Brunswick plant.
An oil shipment just like that was loaded onto 73 cars owned by Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway (MMA), which rolled down a hill into Lac-Mégantic on Saturday, and exploded in the core of the town, killing at least 13 people and leaving 37 unaccounted for and feared dead.
For the rest of this column, click here: http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/07/08/quebec-rail-tragedy-serves-as-reminder-that-oil-pipeline-debate-has-led-to-poor-decisions/