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Two Pipelines Shut Down After 43 Barrels of Crude Leak into Missouri Soil
Two Pipelines Shut Down After 43 Barrels of Crude Leak into Missouri Soil
Parts of two pipelines owned by controversial Canadian pipeline companies remained shut down Thursday following the discovery of a leak near St. Louis, Missouri on Wednesday, CBC News reported.
Both TransCanada‘s Keystone pipeline and Enbridge‘s Platte pipeline run parallel to each other through the area. The Keystone pipeline, which carries 590,000 barrels of crude oil a day from Alberta, has faced opposition from environmental activists in the area because it transports from Alberta’s tar sands.
“[Leaks] are one more reason on top of climate change to show that tar sands are dangerous and should not be running through our state,” Missouri Sierra Club Director John Hickey told St. Louis Public Radio. Residents are also worried the poor quality of the pipeline’s steel makes leaks more likely, Hickey said.
The leak was discovered by a TransCanada technician 7:14 a.m. Wednesday. The technician found crude oil covering some 4,000 square feet around the pipeline in St. Charles County, Missouri. TransCanada said it was not sure how much oil had leaked, but thought it was around 43 barrels. The company said it was not yet possible to tell if the leak came from the Keystone or neighboring Enbridge pipeline.
“Until you can excavate and see the top of the pipes, you can’t really determine which pipeline the release occurred from,” TransCanada Public Information Officer Matthew John told St. Louis Public Radio.
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Canada: A Microcosm Of The Ultimate Effect Of Low Oil Prices?
Canada: A Microcosm Of The Ultimate Effect Of Low Oil Prices?
Canada’s economy, lately driven in large part by oil, is a classic example of the old see-saw axiom: Downward pressure in one place creates upward pressure in another.
In this case, the bad news of low oil prices for the provinces of Alberta, Newfoundland and Saskatchewan, which until recently were enjoying an oil boom, becomes good news for Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec.
Alberta is a good model for what’s begun to go wrong in Canada. Already, three huge oil companies have canceled oil sands projects there: Shell of Britain at Pierre River, Statoil of Norway at the Corner oil field and France’s Total at the Joslyn mine. And more cancellations are expected as what feels like a non-stop drop in oil prices drives even more energy companies to postpone or even cancel projects.
Related: How Broken Are The Energy Markets?
The reason is that Alberta, Newfoundland and Saskatchewan have been experiencing a boom not in oil, but in oil sands, sandstone impregnated with crude oil. While shale oil is expensive to extract, oil sands are expensive to clean. And at the current average price of crude, which is now just above $50 per barrel, both forms of oil are becoming less and less profitable.
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How $40 oil would impact Canada’s provinces
How $40 oil would impact Canada’s provinces
What does Canada’s economy look like with oil prices at $40 a barrel? Certainly it won’t be the energy superpower envisioned by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
If $40 a barrel still seems a ways off, consider that the benchmark price for oil sands crude is already trading in that price range. What’s more, if production from high cost sources isn’t withdrawn from an oversupplied market, oil prices may soon be trading even lower.
The first thing Canadians should recognize about the new world order for oil prices is that—contrary to what we’re being told by our federal government—the economy is no longer in dire need of any new pipelines. For that matter, it can live without the new rail terminals being built to move oil as well. Yesterday’s transportation bottlenecks aren’t relevant in today’s marketplace.
At current prices there won’t be any massive expansion of oil sands production because those projects, which would produce some of the world’s most expensive crude, no longer make economic sense.
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