Are Pipelines Safe?
What’s the safest way to transport oil? According to environmentalists, progressive politicians, and the media, it’s anything but pipelines. Are they right? Diana Furchtgott-Roth, adjunct professor at George Washington University, dives into the data for answers.
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Script:
One of the very first things President Joe Biden did on his very first day in office was to cancel the Keystone XL Pipeline.
That wasn’t an accident.
The Democrats and their environmentalist allies hate the pipeline.
In the immortal words of Al Capone in the movie “The Untouchables,” they “want it dead.”
And now it is.
The company that was building the project has announced that after 16 years of futile effort, it won’t pursue any more court appeals. They’re backing out; they’ve had enough.
But here’s what doesn’t make sense.
Rigorous studies by the Obama Administration in which Joe Biden served as vice president concluded that the pipeline would not create an environmental hazard. The oil is coming out of the ground no matter what. It’s only a question of how it gets to where it needs to go.
The pipeline would have created thousands of construction jobs and moved large amounts of needed oil and gas from Canada to refineries in the US.
Lots of upside; almost no downside.
That’s why President Biden’s antipathy toward the project is hard to understand.
Maybe it’s a safety issue? So, let’s look at pipelines from a safety perspective.
Within the US, oil and gas have to be transported from point A to point B. To do this, oil producers have three choices: pipeline, rail, or road.
Fortunately, all three methods have low accident rates, but pipelines are clearly the safest.
Here’s why:
They don’t move.
Trains move.
Trucks move.
Pipelines don’t.
When oil is in a pipeline, the pipeline stays still and the oil moves with little risk of accident. New technology makes it even safer. Pipelines can now be monitored for a leak the size of a pinhole. Sophisticated pressure gauges can signal if oil pressure is declining, another sign of a potential problem.
Moving oil and gas safely around the continent is a big deal because the amount of oil and gas moved is a big deal.
For example, the United States imports about 3.2 million barrels a day of crude oil from Canada alone. And, of course, it moves much more oil within its own borders.
Petroleum production in the United States is about 11 million barrels a day. U.S. natural gas production is about 100 billion cubic feet per day.
No matter how many net-zero carbon mandates are passed, that won’t change.
It all has to go somewhere. And most of it already goes through pipelines.
America has 190,000 miles of onshore and offshore petroleum pipelines and 2.4 million miles of natural gas pipelines that collect natural gas and send it to businesses and consumers.
Approximately 80 percent of crude oil and petroleum products are shipped by pipeline. Road and rail account for most of the rest with tanker and barge making up a small fraction.
If safety and environmental damages in the transportation of oil and gas were proportionate to the volume of shipments, the majority of harmful incidents should involve pipelines. But the opposite is true: the majority of incidents involve road and rail.
And when they do happen, they can be catastrophic. For example, in July of 2013, 47 people were killed when a train carrying oil derailed in the Canadian town of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec. The entire town was leveled in the conflagration that ensued.
Data on oil and gas transportation is available from the US Department of Transportation. The department keeps track of all injuries and fatalities.
Natural gas transmission lines had a low average injury rate for operator personnel and the general public, having an average of only 5 per year over the past ten years.
Just as natural gas transmission pipelines are connected with few injuries, they are also connected with few deaths. Between 2011 and 2020, there was an average of 2 deaths annually from natural gas transmission pipeline incidents.
For the complete script as well as FACTS & SOURCES, visit https://www.prageru.com/video/are-pipelines-safe
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The people who are complaining about it cancelled are also the first to vote and lobby so that this "safe pipeline" goes far far away from them and detours through indigenous land instead.
If it's so safe, why not your backyard instead?
My question I can’t seem to get an answer on is, what about the magnetic Catholic bed they create to keep the pipeline from rusting. Is that safe for humans who live near the pipeline?
wow everyone involved in this video is a demon, imagine that. From the bottom to the top not a single redeemable soul helped producing this video. From the animators to the writers to the sponsors just a vast assemblage of people who will with 100% certainty spend all of eternity tortured in the fires of hell. wacky
can u cease to exist?
Wars have been started over international pipeline disputes.
Syria and Ukraine, just to name a few..
How many lies and stupid takes can we fit into a video challenge
This is such an insanely stupid video it's difficult to put into words. Conservatives really out here repeating "trains MOVE and pipes DONT MOVE" multiple times like their voter base are infants. Because they are.
That pipeline is stupid. It will leak a lot of toxic oil around and pipelines should be very much handled with care which the company will build. The pipeline won't be handled with care. Because companies don't really often repair pipelines.
"The oil is coming out of the ground no matter what🤷♀️" why does it sound like she genuinely thinks oil just spurts from the Earth all the time. Also why are her talking points all things that support stopping oil companies 💀
Why support wasting so much money on infrastructure to move a finite resource? That money would be better put towards a resource that we don't have to negotiate for and won't eventually run out. Reviewable energy is the key, not gas and oil. The pipeline will be moot when we run out of things to pump through it, then it's just wasted money. Why do Republicans refuse to think into the future?
Feel like yall are forgetting that keystone was running right through Native American land and more importantly it was a place of religious and historical importance to them. But maybe that’s just me
theyre really out here like "god made pipelines so we have to keep using them"
Remember when BP said they're pipelines were incredibly safe and then they never spilled… oh wait…
Really flexing your oil money in this one Prager
I don't think it's safety. I'm pretty sure it's because the pipeline would plow through indigenous lands. You know the places that we forced all the natives to move to after nearly genociding them. It would be like kicking someone out of their home, and forcing them into a really shitty house, then later deciding you wanted to build a road so you run it straight through their front lawn.
It’s not about safety it’s about impending on the rights of those on reservations. As, you mentioned we already have plenty of pipelines. So why was this one stopped?? Because it’s was unethical. Stop trying to push that narrative we are smarter than that. (Also, it’s me or does the lady look like an AI, like an animation?….)
Absolutely BS about being safe along our waters? You smoking crack or sold your soul to the devil! The damage they have done is insurmountable
That’s Canada not the US who had that 2013 accident
400,000 gallons have leaked from that keystone pipeline. It contaminated drinking water native Indians rely on.
What if the pipe had an explosion? What about the Native Americans living on the land? That doesn't sound like a win for everyone.
The reality is much more sinister than you think. Billions of lives rely on energy=oil-gas. The only true survivors would be the third world and the Amish.
She keeps saying natural gas but the keystone pipeline had nothing to do with gas. It has all to do with that dirty fracking . Oil from sand which is so bad they have black snow in Canada.
That keystone polluted drinking water for native Americans.
8% is what’s complete. They already had a leak of 386,000 gallons.
Everyone talking about jobs. Only a thousand of them.the ride is sent to the Gulf of Mexico. It’s not meant for the US .
Next on the agenda: why public transportation is a war on freedom and cars… Oh wait…
It is ironic so many environmental activists don't want the pipeline here, yet are ok with it elsewhere. When it comes to the 'global environment' here or there makes no difference. It seems like some people just don't want to dirty up our own soil, but are willing to pass that burden of our energy needs off to other countries. They also forget that it still has to be transported, which is even riskier and burns more fuel just to get it here. At least here we can keep spillage to a minimum, making things cleaner and safer. It is also more efficient and the savings can be passed along to the consumers, which would lower prices at the pumps.
Pipelines are much safer than floating raw crude oil across thousands and thousands of miles to spill it seems like an idiot a concept that pipelines would be worse
Fun fact: due to global warming, earth will be uninhabitable by 2085
what about all of the native land that the pipeline would have, and did destroy, without permission
And you believe that the left cares about any of this because???
You forgot to mention the owner of the rail roads is a big Democrat donor!
Oil produces more energy than wind and solar? Man it sure would be really weird if that had a reason… like maybe that 70% of subsidies for energy go to oil and fossil fuels because of lobbyists such as yourself talking about how little solar works.
And I mean honestly who cares that this pipeline would have run through indigenous land. They've been living in our country after all right? It's time they stopped being so selfish and gave a little for once. So they'll need to be relocated due to pipeline being laid down in their backyard! That doesn't matter. Moving homes is notoriously easy, and if they can make a sacrifice for the good of the country, well then it's basically their responsibility.
Do not listen to this ghoul. She makes it sound like "Well the oil is going to come out of the ground anyway" as if it were as natural an occurrence as plants producing oxygen, but that's not the case! We have to mine for it and if we agitate for change…. we could stop it. Oh and a little neat information I learned looking this up, this particular pipeline transports tar sands oil which supposedly spills three times more per mile than regular oil! It's also more acidic and corrosive so much more environmentally dangerous, and we wanted to run this garbage through indigenous lands, because "NOT IN MY BACK YARD".
Who is PragerU funded by again? Oh right! Dan and Farris Wilks, two hyper religious petroleum billionaires with a vested interest in funding conservative media specifically! That probably doesn't affect the information being shared here by a youtube channel that doesn't have any standards requiring them to tell the truth.
They canceled it because it was going to have to be built across indigenous land. They weren't concerned that it would increase carbon emissions. This video purposefully misses the point
Trucks crash and burn lots of fuel ??
If we don't want to talk even about the effects environmentally think about the fact that the line would cut straight over Native American land, taking away even more of what belongs to them, not to mention that a potential spill is now likely to seriously impact them, I'm just saying, how would you like it if someone put a pipeline in your backyard near one of your only sources of water.
Prageru is literally funding by the wilks and the Koch brothers. Who both make money directly make money off fossil fuels. This is literally propaganda.
You’re right, the only problem anyone has ever had with oil was how many people are hurt while shipping it.
The original Keystone literally spilled 383,000 gallons of crude oil in North Dakota just hours after an environmental assessment for the Keystone XL pipeline in 2019. In 2017 it spilled 276,864 gallons in South Dakota. It had a dozen spills in its first year. In December a diesel pipeline spilled 300,000 gallons near New Orléans. As of last Oct an underwater pipeline off the coast of California has spilled tens of thousands of gallons of crude causing massive ecological damage and we have no idea how long it had been spilling for, possibly as long as a year.
Despite all of this, the argument isn’t even truly about whether it’s safe (it’s not), it’s just that these spills happen often enough that Indigenous peoples don’t want them going through their sacred lands.
ROFLCOPTER
YALL THIS CHANNEL IS FUNDED BY THE KOCH FAMILY
This video is the actual definition of conflict of interest.
This is like a vampire talking about the benefits of mouth to neck blood transfusions.
dont bother replying, i already know if those kids could read theyd be very upset.
ALSO: for all the "pipelines are perfect" comments, bruh it takes ten seconds to google that shit and make you look like an absolute clown.
and if you CLAIM to work for an oil company, that makes you BIAS and anything you say can be easily dismissed by the appeal to authority fallacy.
I heard these same facts from traveling pipeline workers
It brings me and my friends so much joy seeing this pipeline ceased, as a reasonable group of republicans 🙂
LET'S GO BRANDON!