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And yet when a pipeline was proposed it was quickly shot down [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_East https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_East ADD

• lvs 7y ago
  And yet there are lots of excellent reasons why. There's nothing safe about pipelines. In Canada alone there over a hundred pipeline leaks or explosions every year [1,2]. [1] https://equiterre.org/en/news/new-report-oil-pipeline-safety-failures-in-canada https://equiterre.org/en/news/new-report-oil-pipeline-safety... [2] https://apps2.neb-one.gc.ca/pipeline-incidents/ https://apps2.neb-one.gc.ca/pipeline-incidents/
  • jessriedel 7y ago
    How many do you think is the appropriate number? Surely not zero, since this can only be approached in the limit of infinite expenditures. So what principle would you use to tell?
    • 420codebro 7y ago
      He has no principle. Just politics wrapped in environmentalism. Don’t dig too deep - there isn’t much to find.
    • Karrot_Kream 7y ago
      > Surely not zero, since this can only be approached in the limit of infinite expenditures. What proof do you have of the lower bound here?
      • viraptor 7y ago
        There's no physical device with zero failures over an unbounded time. Whether it's human errors or material degradation, things will fail at some point. Materials also have production faults which can make them break on the first usage. Everything has a non-zero chance of failing. The "infinite expenditures" part comes in because you can introduce redundancies and fail-safes, but those introduce complexity / more work / more materials, which have extra costs. Then you need to spend time/money making sure the whole system works together / testing failure modes. But that may also fail, etc.
        • SECProto 7y ago
          There's at least one (idealistic) method to reduce the number of pipelines leaks and explosions to zero. This will also eliminate the risk of another Lac Megantic disaster, and reduce emissions to zero! It's just not an immediate-term proposition.
        • mannykannot 7y ago
          This issue is too theoretical to contribute to deciding what should be acceptable. I will open the bidding by suggesting that Canada's frequency of dangerous pipeline failures should not exceed its frequency of airliner crashes.
          • viraptor 7y ago
            I assumed the parent referred to the zero lower bound. A realistic lower bound discussion is more complex/interesting of course.
            • Karrot_Kream 7y ago
              I meant to segue into a realistic lower bound, not a zero bound, though I definitely wasn't clear about it.
  • JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > There's nothing safe about pipelines They're safer than trains. The problem is new pipelines usually enable new extraction. If we could decouple those two, i.e. shift transport of existing extraction from trains to pipelines without creating lots of new extraction, that would be a net benefit to all.
    • throwaway3627 7y ago
      Pipelines are different than trains. - They can leak much more in an unit time than trains... hundreds of thousands of gallons, and regulatory enforcement on leaks in the US is very weak because of corporate capture. - They are built usually by legally-stealing land (easements, eminent domain) from people along the way. - If they leak on people's land, they don't have much recourse. - All the safety tech and building codes in the world don't matter if the operators don't really care about leaks because the risks of fines and lawsuits is so comparatively small. There are hundreds of oil leaks per year, and they can be absolutely huge, but because they're usually in the middle of "nowhere," they rarely make the mainstream news.
• r00fus 7y ago
  False dichotomy. Let’s limit extraction instead and invest instead into clean infrastructure like power lines.
  • JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > Let’s limit extraction instead Just blocking pipelines without restricting extraction virtually guarantees these outcomes. Restricting extraction while shifting transport to pipelines looks like a better solution than just blocking pipelines.
    • adrianN 7y ago
      Bad publicity for fossil fuels is good news for the climate. Any new infrastructure for fossil fuels creates investors with an interest in keeping extraction going.
      • throwaway3627 7y ago
        Incentives (carrots) and enforcement (sticks) are the only things most big polluters will respect. And that will require strong political will, leadership and outreach relationships to accomplish, one region at a time.
  • masonic 7y ago
    Let's render extraction unnecessary by reducing demand. Meanwhile, use transport that minimizes environmental damage.
    • dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      >Meanwhile, use transport that minimizes environmental damage. You're gonna be hard pressed to find a means of transport that's more environmentally friendly than steel wheels on steel rails. Friction is a bitch.
  • travisoneill1 7y ago
    To be more accurate you would say "restrict consumption" because that is what you are doing here. How do you plan to do that? If you did so by restricting extraction directly, as you seem to imply it would cause oil prices to jump dramatically. In fact, since oil is has extremely inelastic demand, this would be a massive windfall to the oil industry. The only other way to do it is rationing, which I'm sure would go over about as well as the massive price increase.
• WalterBright 7y ago
  You can't eliminate pipe leaks, etc. But you can compartmentalize to minimize the damage a leak does, much like dividing a ship into watertight compartments. The hydraulic system on a Boeing jetliner is compartmentalized so that a leak in one of the systems doesn't drain away all the hydraulic fluid in that system - only the actuators downstream of the leak get affected.
  • benzofuran 7y ago
    On the contrary, you can eliminate pipe leaks easily - just many areas have fairly lax integrity management requirements for operators, and those that don't only apply to new lines - very rarely does legislation cover preexisting pipelines. New pipelines (especially ones considered DOT regulated in the US, overseen by PHMSA) typically are installed with automatic block valves and flow level leak detection systems. Those combined with a sensible internal and external corrosion control program can push the life of a pipeline without incident out past the useful life of the pipeline. But retrofitting these is expensive and most pipeline operators won't do it without regulatory or other political pressure.
    • WalterBright 7y ago
      > you can eliminate pipe leaks easily Famous last words. A better design is to assume leaks occur, and design to minimize the damage. (This is how airliners are designed.) > with automatic block valves That's compartmentalization, not elimination. Another method is to use two smaller pipes instead of one larger one - it reduces the scale of any leak.
      • masonic 7y ago
        use two smaller pipes instead of one larger one - it reduces the scale of any leak. ... while doubling the exposure to failure in the first place.
        • benzofuran 7y ago
          This actually ends up increasing your likelihood of failure, as smaller parallel lines mean higher operational costs for smart pigs and other integrity assessment tools making internal issues harder to detect before failure, and increased risk for external failure due to cathodic protection system failures due to interference and shielding.
• deleted 7y ago
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• throwaway3627 7y ago
  Pipes: bad. Trains: worse. Clean(er) energy generation and chemical manufacturing: mucho mucho better.
  • deleted 7y ago
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