People are weirdly ok with huge amounts of flammable toxic materials passing through the cities and towns in spite of Lac Megantic.
At the emergency management conference I was at, a colleague was mentioning how stunning it is that people consider rail less hazardous and more environmentally friendly than pipelines. On going CO2 emissions from locomotives running on mostly non-bio diesel because of temperature restraints so there is NOX and SOX as well. Rail also runs through middles of cities and close to residential areas. I have to agree. Perhaps there is a false sense of security because rail cars only holds 114,000L (30,000 US gal) and people think incidents would be confined to 1 car?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tasker-crude-by-rail-eight-fold-increase-1.4842410
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Thank the idiots who protest pipelines eh
ReplyDeleteI'm all for using rail instead of pipelines. Simply devote all the $$ that was going to the pipeline to upgrade the rail systems and there's a chance that every business sector benefits, not just the petroleum industry.
ReplyDeleteThe number of electric vehicles produced is doubling every 2 years. 2%, 4%, 8%, 16%, 32%, 64%...6 doublings will bring us to 100%.
There will be a point on that timeline when the pipelines become useless. Rail will always be useful.
Got a problem with NOX & SOX? It'll cost less to electrify the rail than it will to lay pipes.
Where are we going to get the space for all these rail upgrades? How are you going to move all the towns put at risk by moving flammable liquids through their communities? Electrifying rail is not cheap nor immediate - especially if you are moving flammable dangerous goods. There isn't renewable energy infrastructure available to supply electricity so NOX/SOX from coal or natural gas is still a factor. Also, converting all the locomotives to electric. You want to eventually electrify rails but until then where does the fuel come from David Belliveau
ReplyDeleteYou seem to be implying that the only ones who benefit from the petroleum industry are people who work in it but there are a pile of service providers as well who are supported by it. Their skills will have to be transitioned. I really did consider whether rail should replace pipelines - even before Lac Megantic was destroyed by rail car explosions. So no, rail is not a reasonable substitute. It takes up a lot of space and is affected by weather. Pipelines can be repurposed for other liquids or even used as conduit for electrical energy should oil becomes obsolete.
Do you really think everyone will replace their gas vehicle with electrical vehicles in 12 years (that's 6 cycles). That's quite an optimistic production view considering that Tesla had problems meeting its last quarter targets. Hyundai and VW are experiencing the same challenges for getting their initial offering out the door in spite of high interest.
I do think electrical fueled by renewable energy is on the near horizon at last; driven by the EU while the US rolls back environmental protections. The price coming down to be consumer affordable at last. But nothing happens via magic wand and polluting today, as you propose, for the promise of tomorrow is not a good tactic.
What the people feel is true vs. what is actually true almost always comes out in favor of what they feel. In the U.S., politicians are always told by average people, “Don’t raise income taxes, raise sales taxes. Sales taxes hurt us less.” In fact, raising sales taxes hurts about 95 percent of Americans far more than raising income taxes would.
ReplyDeleteCass Morrison Petroleum carrying rail cars can be safer than they are now. It's not magic.
ReplyDeleteWho's talking about new rail lines? I think plenty can be done on existing rail lines to make them safer.
The collapse of oil prices will happen once electric vehicles replace 2 million barrels of daily oil consumption. At the current growth rate, this will happen in 2023. Just 5 years from now.
At that time, tar sands oil will be too expensive to produce or transport, by rail or by pipeline.
Tesla just annihilated their 3rd quarter targets and will continue on their path. VW has developed the MEB platform and will be putting 10 million MEB vehicles on the road starting in 2020.
Never mind how much the Tesla Semi will decrease daily oil consumption. All the big fleets have many on order and will start putting them to work in 2019. The price and performance and reduced operating cost of a Tesla Semi is so much better than existing transport trucks that it's almost no contest.
The US government isn't capable of stopping the worldwide consumer adoption of electric vehicles. The world is buying electric vehicles at an ever accelerating pace.
Oil is toast. Especially tar sands oil.
Pipelines are a waste of money. Why do you think Kinder Morgan shareholders only took a few minutes to vote almost unanimously to sell their boondoggle to Trudeau and Morneau?
You don't need a crystal ball to see what's coming. You just need to pay attention.
https://plus.google.com/photos/...
FWIW most (all?) locomotives are already electric, they just use huge diesel engines to power the generators. So they're "Diesel electric," and they usually run on the second most grungy fuel out there (container ships use the worst, except for those designed to run on methanol).
ReplyDeleteNow, let's talk about cost for a moment. Full disclosure: I don't have hard numbers in front of me, so take that into account. The numbers are out there, though.
The cost + maintenance of a pipeline is orders of magnitude lower than the cost + maintenance of a rail system of equivalent capacity. To say simply taking that money and applying it to rail would solve the issue is madness. But it doesn't end there. These are two entirely different industries, different businesses. And while they're regulated by governments, a government cannot take money from Company X and give it to Company Y just because someone prefers rail over pipelines. (This, of course, could be achieved through creative taxation and grants, etc, but it's a non-trivial process).
Besides all of that, pipelines are safer, more efficient, cleaner, and less disruptive than rail & trucks.
Finally, while EVs are definitely the way of the future (I myself am a Tesla Model 3 owner), it only makes up a portion of total fossil-fuel consumption. Oil isn't going away, and that includes the Athabasca oil sands developments. Demand for these raw materials is driven by so much more than trucks and cars - from plastics feedstock to chemical processes, from syngas to adhesives, and for heavy industrial fuels to power generation, demand for the raw materials is continuing to rise.
The reality is simple logic. The real solution isn't to stop all pipeline development. The real solution is to have tighter and more meaningful controls on the planning and development, the maintenance, and the operation of those pipelines.
Michael Ireland TransMountain is Canadian government property. They can stop the expansion today and divert every dollar into rail car and rail bed upgrade.
ReplyDeleteRemember, an upgraded rail system is better for many, many industries, not just fossil fuels.
Heck, it might even be worth it to temporarily subsidise oil transport by rail for a little while if the rail companies perform safety and performance upgrades. However, this needs to be temporary. Tar sands oil will soon be too expensive for the world market.
So yes, they can take money from X and give it to Y.
Not too long ago, there was a 20 million barrel per day oversupply of oil. The oil price collapsed.
OPEC got worried again and cut supply until they were able to get supply and demand working in their favour again.
That was something that OPEC was able to control. OPEC can't control gigawatt after gigawatt of energy storage capacity being built into the transportation system.
When the battery penetration is equivalent to knocking off 2 million barrels a day of petroleum, the price will collapse again. The estimated date for this will be 2023.
The difference is that this time it will get worse every day for petroleum. They will have no way to respond. The gigafactories of the world will continue at an accelerated pace to cut the demand for fossil fuels.
Yes, fossil fuel products have other markets besides transportation fuel. That doesn't change the fact that diminished demand will lower the price per barrel substantially and since petroleum is available from so many different sources, the ones that can still produce it at a profit will be the ones selling it into these markets.
The only hope for Alberta fossil fuels a decade from now will be to build lots of chemical plants to produce plastic pellets and related items. Exporting raw resources, even through pipelines, will not work when transportation fuel is no longer the largest fossil fuel market.
You need to incentivize companies to build locally if you want value added industries, otherwise they'll just build elsewhere and import the raw resources. Not saying it's impossible, after all I work in one of those value-added industries. Alberta has been a resource powerhouse for a long time, and it's very difficult to change that paradigm.
ReplyDeleteMacroeconomics is not a simple thing.
The mere fact of tar sands extraction in the face of climate change is an abomination. How the finished product is transported is like the placement of deck chairs on the Titanic.
ReplyDeletePhil Stevens the fact is that oilsands extraction isn't the most environmentally benign process in the world, but it doesn't hold a candle to some of the heavy metal mining, coal mining, and "sweet" oil extraction happening all over the world. People have a cow over the CO2 production from the oilsands, but they don't seem to care about the mercury from coal in China, the habitat destruction from deforestation in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, and the DRC, the spoiled rivers in India, and so on. People who have this skewed view that somehow the Athabasca oilsands development is the worst thing since Chernobyl need to get out a bit more.
ReplyDeleteAgain, I'm not saying it's the cleanest thing on the planet - indeed, it's heavily regulated for good reason. But all this hyperbole isn't helping anyone.
Malaysia, DRC, Brazil, India, China...does it smell like fish in here because the red herrings are being hauled in by the boat load.
ReplyDeleteYes, people the world over care about all your examples of planet destruction. But that's off topic.
No, the Athabasca Tar Sands industry isn't Chernobyl. It's worse. Combusting tar sands affects the entire planet.
Tonne by tonne, the tar sands are making the climate crisis worse.
Rather than making it easier to extract and consume, sane people would be doing everything they can to turn off the tap.
A great way to restrict tar sands combustion is to stay with rail for now and avoid the massive flow a pipeline would deliver.
Like I said before, the pipeline will be practically useless in a decade. Oil prices will collapse. The Alberta economy will self-destruct because they've taken the easy way out and decided to sell raw resources instead of value added products.
It'll be just like the 80s and 90s, except much worse because there will be no end in sight as each battery cell manufactured will reduce daily petroleum consumption by 30 millilitres.
100 gigafactories. That's all it would take. 500 billion dollars would provide the manufacturing capacity to replace fossil fuels with solar and battery energy storage.
About 80 billion of that is already committed.
Tick tock.
David Belliveau No one in Alberta combusts tar sands.
ReplyDeleteedited to add also there is no longer open pit tar sand mining. It's all SAGD with minimal surface disruption to dimish environmental impact during extraction. The current provincial government is actually working to decrease CO2 emissions by phasing out coal, promoting renewables like wind and solar, and shuts down pipeline violators (Nexen).
Cass Morrison Sad.
ReplyDeleteCass Morrison nailed it.
ReplyDeleteDavid Belliveau reality, sans magic wand often is.
ReplyDeleteCass Morrison You're saying that the bitumen never ends up in an internal combustion engine?
ReplyDeleteCass Morrison You're also trying to tell me that nobody's driving the 797s any more?
ReplyDeleteBaloney.
No, I'm saying bitumen is upgraded to remove heavy ends so it is equivalent to crude oil for processing. I was wrong about the amount of SAGD; misled by how new projects use SAGD that technology but older projects like Syncrude and Suncor continue expansions with surface mining. TBH I'm surprise everyone hasn't shifted to SAGD since horizontal drilling is established tech and there isn't piles of sand and settling ponds to deal with.
ReplyDeleteNone of this actually counters the argument that pipelines are a more efficient and more easily maintained method of transportation liquids. There's a reason we have municipal water pipe line systems for delivery and sewage removal. It's not because water is safe.
aer.ca - Crude Bitumen Production
Cass Morrison Here's the page for Teck's giant open pit tar sands mine.
ReplyDeleteteck.com - Frontier Project
Their euphemism for open pit is "Truck and Shovel Mine". It will be the biggest one in the world.
When I reference combustion, I'm not talking about the processing of the sands. I'm talking about the end use. The vast majority of the mined resource will end up as transportation fuel. Transportation fuel is combusted in internal combustion engines. Tonnes and tonnes of carbon dioxide that adds on to the tonnes and tonnes already emitted.
Yes, pipelines are more efficient. They more efficiently move the tar sands to the consumers. Which means that more carbon dioxide can be added to the atmosphere faster and cheaper than ever before.
Anyone who thinks that's a good thing is either a sociopath or uninformed.
Faster and cheaper is not what the planet needs in this particular instance. Slower and more expensive is preferred if the goal is to restrict the transfer of carbon fuels to the atmosphere.
The best solution is to keep it in the ground.
Again, I'm an advocate for alternative energies, no question. But I'm also a realist. Pipelines are simply the safest way to move the stuff, and the industry isn't going to magically go away any time soon. And, contrary to popular belief, pipelines can be converted from oil to other products if the demand for oil was to suddenly disappear.
ReplyDeleteMichael Ireland Nobody's going to use a fossil fuel pipeline for anything else other than fossil fuel. Repeating it over and over isn't going to make it true.
ReplyDeleteName one product other than fossil fuel that would require a 500,000 barrel per day pipe.
The petroleum industry isn't going to go away any time soon. But the industry shouldn't be allowed to expand at any cost. We don't live in an Ayn Rand laissez-faire capitalist utopia.
A railway is the best way to moderate the pace of extraction.
As an added bonus, using railways instead of pipelines also spreads the $$ around to more participants and provides rail industry with funds to improve the infrastructure.
Clearly you don't understand how a pipeline operates. Whether or not the producer requires the full capacity of the line is irrelevant. But I'm not really here to educate you, and you're absolutely free to have and voice your opinions. It just so happens that while I don't really disagree with the overarching sentiment (that fossil fuels are not long for this world), I do disagree with your ideas about implementation.
ReplyDeleteThis is going in circles with no agreement. David Belliveau is ok with flammable liquids passing through urban centres because it an inherently inefficient method of movement. It's not about safety (immediate) but health (long term) That's all I really wanted to know so I'm closing this.
ReplyDelete