12 ms·

For people who oppose pipelines, what is the safer alternative for transporting oil?

black_puppydog 7y ago
For one: not transport oil. Use oil (and other fossil fuels) if and only if there is no way to use something else. Or: change the system that builds these pipelines so the incentives of the entity/entities building and maintaining it have "safety of environment" as a clear and unambiguous incentive.
- ethbro 7y ago
  > have "safety of environment" as a clear and unambiguous incentive That's non-trivial to do in practice. It's already incentivized, via inspections and fines. What you're presumably talking about is prioritizing it above other incentives. Which gets into how much risk is acceptable and how much risk mitigation is reasonable to pay for. Hint: never enough that risk approaches zero. I absolutely think fines (and especially inspections, or likelihood of catching violations) should be increased, but the world economy is still transitioning off oil. It's easy to forget that we can absolutely put such a premium on risk that energy prices spike, that suppresses downstream consumers and economic activity, that causes worse outcomes. IMHO, accelerating the shift to clean renewables, while simultaneously continuing to raise fines and regulation on oil pipelines as the actual energy mix shifts is the optimal choice.
  - hanniabu 7y ago
    > That's non-trivial to do in practice. $1M fine for every gallon spilled. Any attempts to falsify data will lead to imprisonment and 5x fines per gallon. Boom, properly incentivized.
    - ethbro 7y ago
      And what effect does that have on energy prices?
      - cannonedhamster 7y ago
        Who cares? The market will adapt.
        manigandham 7y ago
        Billions of people care. The market is you and your family as you deal with increased costs of living or lack of power and other goods.
      - cmiles74 7y ago
        Slightly more expensive to the energy companies, cheaper for the countries the pipeline travels through and the people who live there. I'm not seeing a downside.
  - mindslight 7y ago
    > It's easy to forget that we can absolutely put such a premium on risk that energy prices spike, that suppresses downstream consumers and economic activity, that causes worse outcomes. This kind of undermines the validity of your point, as it carries an assumption of wanting to churn through as many natural resources as possible. If you care about environmental sustainability, every time you hear "reduced economic activity" you should think "sounds great!". We've figured out how to produce so much stuff that our homes are full and we throw things away every several years to get new ones. Economic priests want to keep the machine running full tilt under a misguided idea that sustainability can somehow be priced in. But compare the general time to fix (or simply maintain!) something at your general hourly rate to the cost of buying a shiny new one. Thinking that this harsh dynamic can be abstracted and then recouped somewhere else is simply more unsustainable bubble thinking.
    - ethbro 7y ago
      It's a straw man to cast all concerns about economy sustainability as "exploit natural resources as quickly as we can." There are serious, life-threatening concerns about reorienting the world to a lower-growth, lower-carbon model. And to substitute fervor for fact is just as much of a fallacy as the global free trade crowd committed, before recently admitting that maybe they should have thought harder about the dislocating side effects and funding strategic workforce reskilling programs. We don't get to a brighter future by ignoring the hard questions and consequences of proposed paths.
      - mindslight 7y ago
        Sure, any sort of abrupt change has serious (possibly life threatening) concerns. But there is a difference in arguing for caution, and perpetuating the same assumptions that have lead to the current state of affairs. Drawing attention to one of those assumptions rather than letting it continue in the background does not make for a straw man. "Economic activity" directly translates into "use natural resources". The overwhelming fallacy seems to be this idea that sustainability will somehow eventually, not today, but some day soon, be priced into the economy such that we can have large sums sloshing back and forth but the externalities will be fully captured. This seems like an economically convenient myth, analogous to the free trade crowd's handwaving about comparative advantage. Sorry I did not see how to succinctly express the overall arc of what I said with less "fervor". If two people are having a casual conversation about say baseball, but you think it is harmful and destructive, it's impossible to express without sounding like a looney. (I used baseball because I think it's innocuous. Whereas any real example would inherently be polarizing).
  - einpoklum 7y ago
    > It's already incentivized, via inspections and fines. Well, the inspections aren't happening - since major leaks are happening. And the fines are very small, otherwise a bunch of these companies would have gone under. More importantly - no criminal charges against the management of these companies and the engineers who signed off on the thing.
- cartoonworld 7y ago
  To your latter point, industries with this sort of externalized risk should be required to issue real stock to stakeholders (Such as the neighbors of the pipeline, the downstream water users, upstream water users as well, groundwater users, etc) They are already unwillling investors in the pipeline. They invest with the cost of their health and safety at a cut-rate of $0 to the operator of these critical systems. "I got mine!" is a terrible foundation on which to build a society.
- falcrist 7y ago
  Forcing companies to internalize the environmental costs of spills and leaks would go a loooong way toward achieving the second goal. The problem is the people who write the rules benefit from political support of the very companies that need to be regulated.
calcifer 7y ago
That's begging the question. You assume it's a given that the oil must be transported from Alberta to Texas.
- Claudus 7y ago
  False, you are making a straw man argument, I made no such assumption or claim.
  - ianai 7y ago
    As another commenter, we shouldn’t need to run pipes. Oil is too precious for precarious forms of transportation. It shouldn’t be burned. I’m thinking it’s better uses don’t need it to be pumped like this.
jdnenej 7y ago
Discontinue the use of single use plastic and internal combustion engines.
- microcolonel 7y ago
  You first. You can (sort of) accomplish this for yourself, and you get to benefit from the utility internal combustion provides the economy you're in, so it'll be easier than if the state imposed it. As for single use plastics, you're going to have to narrow that down. What about medical plastics? Food service gloves? Hazmat suits?
- masonic 7y ago
  ...and every element of your personal consumption that relies on either.
  - khawkins 7y ago
    Honestly, it's really tiresome dealing with fanatics who think we can meaningfully eliminate oil usage in the near future. It's nothing more than the delusional fantasy of extreme hypocrites. In a century I could imagine a 50-80% decrease in usage in the US, but by that time Africa and Asia will have doubled in population. Any efficiency gains are totally lost with an increase in population. Every added person will guarantee a life of consumption which requires the use of oil, especially in a nation which isn't anywhere close enough to replacing their infrastructure with "green" technologies.
- ReptileMan 7y ago
  Flintstones, meet the Flintstones There the modern stone age family From the town of Bedrock There a page right out of history Plastics and ICS are here for 2-3 decades at least. Like it or not.
- throwGuardian 7y ago
  This is no less frivolous than the person getting down voted for the Flintstones theme. If we're to make progress on climate change, more practical solutions than those a grade schooler can trivially dream of, need to be discussed. If we could cold turkey cut off single use plastic and IC engines without disrupting the economy and civilisation, we already would
magashna 7y ago
I don't know but I do think the existing pipes need better maintenance. It's crazy that people fault nuclear when there are pipes bursting, underwater spills, etc. so often with the infrastructure we have.
throwGuardian 7y ago
None safer. Unfortunately, these are the most optimized solutions for problems with multiple parameters to tweak (safety, scalability, viability,...). If there were a better way, why wouldn't it be implemented?
- smhost 7y ago
  profit
  - throwGuardian 7y ago
    I know that's a very emotive, convincing bogeyman. But like Obama used to say, "truth has a funny way of catching up" All I'm saying is, the day a Tesla et. al become significantly more affordable than a Honda Civic, with the ability for seamless cross country travel, is the day one can accurately claim no dependency on oil
    - philipps 7y ago
      I’ve seen this argument made before and don’t understand why seamless cross country travel should be the requirement for people traveling in personal cars (like Tesla, Honda, etc). How many people need to seamlessly travel more than a few hundred miles regularly? It might be better to optimize for the majority of use cases, which, I suspect, do not require this.
    - smhost 7y ago
      you're 1) arguing with yourself and 2) pretending like there's no tradeoff between profit and safety.
    - swader999 7y ago
      Didn't the Obama's just purchase beach front in the Hamptons? https://www.bostonmagazine.com/property/2018/08/20/obama-marthas-vineyard-vacation-home/ https://www.bostonmagazine.com/property/2018/08/20/obama-mar...
      - 7y ago
smhost 7y ago
lower flow rate
Iv 7y ago
Make clean energy, transport electricity, use electricity to distill ethanol. Or just use EVs. If you insist on transporting oil, do the same as countries did with oil tankers: force them to have an insurance policy that would cover all the environmental damage costs. Very quickly, insurers forced the shipping companies to reinforce their safeties.
- mercer 7y ago
  In the industry we call this front-falling-off-insurance. While highly unlikely, you want to avoid the front falling off your tanker. Or at least make sure you're outside the environment when it happens!
- sseveran 7y ago
  You can buy insurance for this today. https://www.travelers.com/business-insurance/oil-gas/midstream https://www.travelers.com/business-insurance/oil-gas/midstre...
  - Iv 7y ago
    But is there a law mandating an insurance that would cover all the costs caused by spills and clean up of spills?
Joakal 7y ago
Charge a bond that covers the accepted clean up of the estimated oil that's out of ground until it's processed. At the moment, some governments charge a bond that barely covers the clean up costs. As someone said, the costs are externalized and companies will go bankrupt if they are forced to clean it all up.
- refurb 7y ago
  Companies that work in oil and gas tend to be massive. Seems like the costs of clean up are generally born by the company.
specialist 7y ago
How about the industry fix or properly decommission the ones they have, before they build new ones? There are so many pipelines and well heads and so forth, scattered every where, which are poorly maintained, literally bursting at the seems, and at eminent risk of catastrophic failure. The ones running under the Great Lakes comes to mind. The day when (not if) one of those fails is going to be really, really bad.
kpU8efre7r 7y ago
No pipelines. Let the cost of oil skyrocket and push us to greener alternatives.
- refurb 7y ago
  Oil is central to our entire economy, impacting not only cars, but electrical generation, materials, transportation. I’m sure that single mother working two jobs would love to have her grocery bill go up by 50% so that we can accelerate the adoption of green energy.
  - the_gastropod 7y ago
    As if that’s the only possible outcome. Defending oil companies by claiming their success is in alignment with what’s best for the poor is a rather bizarre point to make.
    - manigandham 7y ago
      Nobody made that point. You're underestimating how important oil is to the entire economy. Understanding all the potential issues that will affect people is necessary if you intend to actually make any changes.
- eloff 7y ago
  It will just go onto trains and trucks which burn oil to move oil, and are much less safe. I'd much rather see the externalities priced into fossil fuels through carbon taxes, ramped up incrementally over ten years. Let the market work its magic once the real price is apparent.
oftenwrong 7y ago
A safer pipeline. It will cost more to build, so the oil will have to be sold at a higher price. This higher price will probably result in reduced consumption of oil.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
cmiles74 7y ago
Pipelines that don't spill boatloads of oil? I remember many complaints that the pipeline was shoddily built and was using sub-standard materials. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2013/08/25/what-is-wrong-with-the-keystone-xl-pipeline/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2013/08/25/what-is-w...

For one: not transport oil. Use oil (and other fossil fuels) if and only if there is no way to use something else. Or: change the system that builds these pipelines so the incentives of the entity/entities building and maintaining it have "safety of environment" as a clear and unambiguous incentive.

ethbro 7y ago
> have "safety of environment" as a clear and unambiguous incentive That's non-trivial to do in practice. It's already incentivized, via inspections and fines. What you're presumably talking about is prioritizing it above other incentives. Which gets into how much risk is acceptable and how much risk mitigation is reasonable to pay for. Hint: never enough that risk approaches zero. I absolutely think fines (and especially inspections, or likelihood of catching violations) should be increased, but the world economy is still transitioning off oil. It's easy to forget that we can absolutely put such a premium on risk that energy prices spike, that suppresses downstream consumers and economic activity, that causes worse outcomes. IMHO, accelerating the shift to clean renewables, while simultaneously continuing to raise fines and regulation on oil pipelines as the actual energy mix shifts is the optimal choice.
- hanniabu 7y ago
  > That's non-trivial to do in practice. $1M fine for every gallon spilled. Any attempts to falsify data will lead to imprisonment and 5x fines per gallon. Boom, properly incentivized.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    And what effect does that have on energy prices?
    - cannonedhamster 7y ago
      Who cares? The market will adapt.
      - manigandham 7y ago
        Billions of people care. The market is you and your family as you deal with increased costs of living or lack of power and other goods.
    - cmiles74 7y ago
      Slightly more expensive to the energy companies, cheaper for the countries the pipeline travels through and the people who live there. I'm not seeing a downside.
- mindslight 7y ago
  > It's easy to forget that we can absolutely put such a premium on risk that energy prices spike, that suppresses downstream consumers and economic activity, that causes worse outcomes. This kind of undermines the validity of your point, as it carries an assumption of wanting to churn through as many natural resources as possible. If you care about environmental sustainability, every time you hear "reduced economic activity" you should think "sounds great!". We've figured out how to produce so much stuff that our homes are full and we throw things away every several years to get new ones. Economic priests want to keep the machine running full tilt under a misguided idea that sustainability can somehow be priced in. But compare the general time to fix (or simply maintain!) something at your general hourly rate to the cost of buying a shiny new one. Thinking that this harsh dynamic can be abstracted and then recouped somewhere else is simply more unsustainable bubble thinking.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    It's a straw man to cast all concerns about economy sustainability as "exploit natural resources as quickly as we can." There are serious, life-threatening concerns about reorienting the world to a lower-growth, lower-carbon model. And to substitute fervor for fact is just as much of a fallacy as the global free trade crowd committed, before recently admitting that maybe they should have thought harder about the dislocating side effects and funding strategic workforce reskilling programs. We don't get to a brighter future by ignoring the hard questions and consequences of proposed paths.
    - mindslight 7y ago
      Sure, any sort of abrupt change has serious (possibly life threatening) concerns. But there is a difference in arguing for caution, and perpetuating the same assumptions that have lead to the current state of affairs. Drawing attention to one of those assumptions rather than letting it continue in the background does not make for a straw man. "Economic activity" directly translates into "use natural resources". The overwhelming fallacy seems to be this idea that sustainability will somehow eventually, not today, but some day soon, be priced into the economy such that we can have large sums sloshing back and forth but the externalities will be fully captured. This seems like an economically convenient myth, analogous to the free trade crowd's handwaving about comparative advantage. Sorry I did not see how to succinctly express the overall arc of what I said with less "fervor". If two people are having a casual conversation about say baseball, but you think it is harmful and destructive, it's impossible to express without sounding like a looney. (I used baseball because I think it's innocuous. Whereas any real example would inherently be polarizing).
- einpoklum 7y ago
  > It's already incentivized, via inspections and fines. Well, the inspections aren't happening - since major leaks are happening. And the fines are very small, otherwise a bunch of these companies would have gone under. More importantly - no criminal charges against the management of these companies and the engineers who signed off on the thing.
cartoonworld 7y ago
To your latter point, industries with this sort of externalized risk should be required to issue real stock to stakeholders (Such as the neighbors of the pipeline, the downstream water users, upstream water users as well, groundwater users, etc) They are already unwillling investors in the pipeline. They invest with the cost of their health and safety at a cut-rate of $0 to the operator of these critical systems. "I got mine!" is a terrible foundation on which to build a society.
falcrist 7y ago
Forcing companies to internalize the environmental costs of spills and leaks would go a loooong way toward achieving the second goal. The problem is the people who write the rules benefit from political support of the very companies that need to be regulated.

calcifer 7y ago

That's begging the question. You assume it's a given that the oil must be transported from Alberta to Texas.

Claudus 7y ago
False, you are making a straw man argument, I made no such assumption or claim.
- ianai 7y ago
  As another commenter, we shouldn’t need to run pipes. Oil is too precious for precarious forms of transportation. It shouldn’t be burned. I’m thinking it’s better uses don’t need it to be pumped like this.

jdnenej 7y ago

Discontinue the use of single use plastic and internal combustion engines.

microcolonel 7y ago
You first. You can (sort of) accomplish this for yourself, and you get to benefit from the utility internal combustion provides the economy you're in, so it'll be easier than if the state imposed it. As for single use plastics, you're going to have to narrow that down. What about medical plastics? Food service gloves? Hazmat suits?
masonic 7y ago
...and every element of your personal consumption that relies on either.
- khawkins 7y ago
  Honestly, it's really tiresome dealing with fanatics who think we can meaningfully eliminate oil usage in the near future. It's nothing more than the delusional fantasy of extreme hypocrites. In a century I could imagine a 50-80% decrease in usage in the US, but by that time Africa and Asia will have doubled in population. Any efficiency gains are totally lost with an increase in population. Every added person will guarantee a life of consumption which requires the use of oil, especially in a nation which isn't anywhere close enough to replacing their infrastructure with "green" technologies.
ReptileMan 7y ago
Flintstones, meet the Flintstones There the modern stone age family From the town of Bedrock There a page right out of history Plastics and ICS are here for 2-3 decades at least. Like it or not.
throwGuardian 7y ago
This is no less frivolous than the person getting down voted for the Flintstones theme. If we're to make progress on climate change, more practical solutions than those a grade schooler can trivially dream of, need to be discussed. If we could cold turkey cut off single use plastic and IC engines without disrupting the economy and civilisation, we already would

magashna 7y ago

I don't know but I do think the existing pipes need better maintenance. It's crazy that people fault nuclear when there are pipes bursting, underwater spills, etc. so often with the infrastructure we have.

throwGuardian 7y ago

None safer. Unfortunately, these are the most optimized solutions for problems with multiple parameters to tweak (safety, scalability, viability,...). If there were a better way, why wouldn't it be implemented?

smhost 7y ago
profit
- throwGuardian 7y ago
  I know that's a very emotive, convincing bogeyman. But like Obama used to say, "truth has a funny way of catching up" All I'm saying is, the day a Tesla et. al become significantly more affordable than a Honda Civic, with the ability for seamless cross country travel, is the day one can accurately claim no dependency on oil
  - philipps 7y ago
    I’ve seen this argument made before and don’t understand why seamless cross country travel should be the requirement for people traveling in personal cars (like Tesla, Honda, etc). How many people need to seamlessly travel more than a few hundred miles regularly? It might be better to optimize for the majority of use cases, which, I suspect, do not require this.
  - smhost 7y ago
    you're 1) arguing with yourself and 2) pretending like there's no tradeoff between profit and safety.
  - swader999 7y ago
    Didn't the Obama's just purchase beach front in the Hamptons? https://www.bostonmagazine.com/property/2018/08/20/obama-marthas-vineyard-vacation-home/ https://www.bostonmagazine.com/property/2018/08/20/obama-mar...
    - 7y ago

smhost 7y ago

lower flow rate

Iv 7y ago

Make clean energy, transport electricity, use electricity to distill ethanol. Or just use EVs. If you insist on transporting oil, do the same as countries did with oil tankers: force them to have an insurance policy that would cover all the environmental damage costs. Very quickly, insurers forced the shipping companies to reinforce their safeties.

mercer 7y ago
In the industry we call this front-falling-off-insurance. While highly unlikely, you want to avoid the front falling off your tanker. Or at least make sure you're outside the environment when it happens!
sseveran 7y ago
You can buy insurance for this today. https://www.travelers.com/business-insurance/oil-gas/midstream https://www.travelers.com/business-insurance/oil-gas/midstre...
- Iv 7y ago
  But is there a law mandating an insurance that would cover all the costs caused by spills and clean up of spills?

Joakal 7y ago

Charge a bond that covers the accepted clean up of the estimated oil that's out of ground until it's processed. At the moment, some governments charge a bond that barely covers the clean up costs. As someone said, the costs are externalized and companies will go bankrupt if they are forced to clean it all up.

refurb 7y ago
Companies that work in oil and gas tend to be massive. Seems like the costs of clean up are generally born by the company.

specialist 7y ago

How about the industry fix or properly decommission the ones they have, before they build new ones? There are so many pipelines and well heads and so forth, scattered every where, which are poorly maintained, literally bursting at the seems, and at eminent risk of catastrophic failure. The ones running under the Great Lakes comes to mind. The day when (not if) one of those fails is going to be really, really bad.

kpU8efre7r 7y ago

No pipelines. Let the cost of oil skyrocket and push us to greener alternatives.

refurb 7y ago
Oil is central to our entire economy, impacting not only cars, but electrical generation, materials, transportation. I’m sure that single mother working two jobs would love to have her grocery bill go up by 50% so that we can accelerate the adoption of green energy.
- the_gastropod 7y ago
  As if that’s the only possible outcome. Defending oil companies by claiming their success is in alignment with what’s best for the poor is a rather bizarre point to make.
  - manigandham 7y ago
    Nobody made that point. You're underestimating how important oil is to the entire economy. Understanding all the potential issues that will affect people is necessary if you intend to actually make any changes.
eloff 7y ago
It will just go onto trains and trucks which burn oil to move oil, and are much less safe. I'd much rather see the externalities priced into fossil fuels through carbon taxes, ramped up incrementally over ten years. Let the market work its magic once the real price is apparent.

oftenwrong 7y ago

A safer pipeline. It will cost more to build, so the oil will have to be sold at a higher price. This higher price will probably result in reduced consumption of oil.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

cmiles74 7y ago

Pipelines that don't spill boatloads of oil? I remember many complaints that the pipeline was shoddily built and was using sub-standard materials. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2013/08/25/what-is-wrong-with-the-keystone-xl-pipeline/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2013/08/25/what-is-w...