As I said in my comment, you need to Google Kalamazoo River oil spill and related like clean up, cost, etc. The current billion dollar cost is way more than Solyndra. When tar sands oil is brought out of the ground it is peanut butter consistency. In order to make it flow, it is mixed with volatile and toxic solvents. It is high in sand and acidic sulfur. It has to be put under pressure to make it move. It is moved in intermittent bursts as is called for downstream. The reason it leaked so badly is that pumpers did not realize that the lack of pressure was due to a big leak, not lack of volume. Read the details, its complicated. The slurry is highly toxic, abrasive, very acidic and under pressure. It is nothing like a regular oil pipeline setup. Surface transportation is a lot safer. Besides it is mostly being sent out of the US. Rather than burden our rivers and highways, let them build a pipeline to the Pacific since most of it is going to China anyway.
The substance recovered from the Athabasca oil sands is sand that is saturated with bitumen. Bitumen is the remains of carbon-based plants and animals that have been transformed into an energy rich “fossil fuel” by millions of years of decay and compression underground. These naturally-occurring deposits in northern Alberta have been utilized for various purposes by humans for centuries. Using steam and hot water, raw bitumen is separated from the sand. Bitumen is then either upgraded by removing carbon and adding hydrogen to create synthetic crude oil or blended to create synbit or dilbit. Synthetic crude oil, is a form of crude oil that closely resembles conventional light crude oil. Dilbit and synbit approximate the characteristics of typical conventional heavy crude oil. Oil sands-derived crude oils have been travelling through North American pipelines for decades and are well understood by the industries responsible for producing, transporting and refining them.
While every batch of crude oil has its own unique characteristics, they all must meet the specifications of the refineries that process crude oil into gasoline and other refined petroleum products. TransCanada’s Keystone Pipeline transports more than 500,000 barrels per day of Canadian crude oil to U.S. refinery markets and has transported more than 340 million barrels since it opened in July 2010. Each batch of oil that enters the pipeline at Hardisty Terminal is tested for viscosity, temperature, water content, suspended solids and other characteristics. The physical and chemical properties of the crude oils transported by the Keystone are very similar to the heavy crudes refined in the U.S. from sources including California, Venezuela, Nigeria and Russia.
Be that as it may, you are still talking about an engineering problem. With a little bit of knowledge and great engineering, you sent a payload to the moon. As to the stuff’s ultimate destination, that is beside the point. Alaska oil goes to Japan because in the end, it all might as well come out of the same well. But it IS black gold, and anyone who wants to think they can have an 18th century environment in this century should be willing to go back to the whole technology of that time,
“As I said in my comment, you need to Google Kalamazoo River oil spill and related like clean up, cost, etc. The current billion dollar cost is way more than Solyndra. When tar sands oil is brought out of the ground it is peanut butter consistency. In order to make it flow, it is mixed with volatile and toxic solvents. It is high in sand and acidic sulfur. It has to be put under pressure to make it move. It is moved in intermittent bursts as is called for downstream. The reason it leaked so badly is that pumpers did not realize that the lack of pressure was due to a big leak, not lack of volume. Read the details, its complicated. The slurry is highly toxic, abrasive, very acidic and under pressure. It is nothing like a regular oil pipeline setup. Surface transportation is a lot safer. Besides it is mostly being sent out of the US. Rather than burden our rivers and highways, let them build a pipeline to the Pacific since most of it is going to China anyway.”
And in 1990 I saw the result of a gouge in an oil tanker, spreading oil onto the beaches of Huntington Beach CA.
Looked catastrophic at the time. Truly horrific. But mother nature cleaned it up surprisingly nicely.
The risks of mishaps are far outweighed by the benefits of reliable energy.
The difference being the company that caused the mess, Enbridge, will be made to pay the full clean up cost plus significant penalties. When this is all said and done, the government will actually make money on the spill, just like all major spills.
When tar sands oil is brought out of the ground it is peanut butter consistency. In order to make it flow, it is mixed with volatile and toxic solvents.
Volatile and toxic solvents? It is mixed with naptha, or other lights separated from crude oil. Crude oil is a mix a of heavy to light hydrocarbons. Bitumen, brought out of the Canadian oil sands are just the heavies. It is mixed with lights our of separated crude oil. It is no more toxic or dangerous than crude oil as it is essential the same at this point.
It is high in sand and acidic sulfur.
It is high in sand coming out of the ground. That sand is separated out at the production field. It doesn't go down the pipeline.
All crude oil has sulfur, some has a lot, some has a little. All crude oil has some sediments in it as well, that get settled out along the way and into the refinery process.
If you want to actually educate yourself on the fluid, rather than just parrot ignorance from NIMBYs and environMENTALists, I suggest you read:
Comparison of the Corrosivity of Dilbit and Conventional Crude
http://www.ai-ees.ca/media/6860/1919_corrosivity_of_dilbit_vs_conventional_crude-nov28-11_rev1.pdf
It has to be put under pressure to make it move.
No. Dilbit does not have this property. Bitumen out of the ground, still at the production unit does, although it is often heated as well. But we were talking about the pipeline product Dilbit.
It is moved in intermittent bursts as is called for downstream.
Absolutely false. The flow is always continuous unless there is an upset condition like a leak. You are demonstrating you don't know what you are talking about.
The reason it leaked so badly is that pumpers did not realize that the lack of pressure was due to a big leak, not lack of volume.
False.
Read the details, its complicated.
Read real information, not made up crap by domestic terrorists trying to keep America down in the stone ages.
At least look at info from the EPA. They are hardly oil company support group.
http://www.epa.gov/enbridgespill/documents.html
There you will learn some of the delays in clean up were caused by the EPA.
The slurry is highly toxic, abrasive, very acidic and under pressure.
False. Dilbit is very similar to "regular" crude oil and moved under the same pressures and flow rates.
It is nothing like a regular oil pipeline setup.
False, not only is it the same setup, it is often moved in the same pipeline.
Surface transportation is a lot safer.
Surface transportation has a much higher spill rate per barrel moved than pipelines.
Besides it is mostly being sent out of the US.
False. Because our domestic demand is down, our refined product output now exceeds the domestic demand and the excess is exported, keeping our refineries online and the jobs at home, until our economy picks back up and the demand grows again. We don't export any real amount crude oil to anywhere except Canada in areas where that is the closest refinery.
typical lefty spewing out misinformation and manipulating the facts to suit your personal agenda..in short a bullcrapper...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/28/minnesota-oil-spill_n_2967118.html