January 14, 2015

Senator Mark Warner

475 Russell Senate Office Building

Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Warner,

I am a freshman at the College of William & Mary, and we met when you visited our campus a few months ago. I have been impressed by your leadership on so many issues ranging from education reform to public welfare. Even on environmental decisions, you have usually been a pro. You typically evaluate both sides and cross party lines. For that, I commend you.

However, I do not agree with your most recent stance on the Keystone XL Pipeline. I do not doubt that like your other decisions you weighed both sides, and put in much time and research. I have read your speech to President Obama, and will not give you the same rhetoric you hear from many environmentalists. Instead, I hope to provide you with some new knowledge to help you understand why I believe our country is not ready for XL.

I, like you, want to find bipartisan solutions and want to believe that the pros outweigh the cons for the Keystone XL Pipeline. Yes, energy independence is essential. Yes, compromises must be made.

But safety is number one. And that shouldn’t have to be compromised. For reasons that I will address in this letter, our country is not currently in a position to pass the Keystone XL Pipeline project. I am not saying that it should never be passed, but currently we do not have adequate regulations, response mechanisms, or data to ensure the safety not only of the environment, but also of human beings.

There are only a few things that we do know. Diluted bitumen, the fluid that would primarily be transported through the pipeline, is inefficiently produced and dangerous. It is a mixture of bitumen, the heaviest crude oil used today, a lighter hydrocarbon and numerous chemicals including the frequent use of the known-carcinogen, benzene (Song “A Dilbit Primer…”). It requires two to five barrels of fresh water to produce one barrel of bitumen. Then, we need to find space to dispose of the toxic tailings (the liquid leftovers from the oil sand extraction). In addition, tar sand extraction produces three times as much carbon emissions as conventional oil (Raynolds…).

We also know that as of quite recently, the US has entered its own oil boom. According to Harold Hamm, the CEO of the Oil Company Continental Resources, with the current American oil surplus, the US no longer needs this extra source of fossil fuels. Just as these changes have been made since the last vote, I hope you can adapt your opinions accordingly.

I assume you are already familiar with these consequences and recent changes. What I hope to show you is that we currently have inadequate safety regulations and response mechanisms in place to deal with this new oil.

We are entering a new game, but we haven’t yet changed the old rules.

Our pipelines are made to carry light oil not heavy dilbit. I know the studies as to whether or not we need to repair our pipelines are controversial. You may have read the National Academy of Science report in June 2013 which concluded that dilbit “moved through pipelines in a manner similar to other crude oils with respect to flow rate, pressure

and operating temperature” (“TRB Special Report 311…”). But the “crude oils” used in the research as the comparing variable to dilbit were primarily heavy crudes which we already knew had similar characteristics to dilbit. Instead, a lighter crude like West Texas Intermediate (WTI) would have been a better comparison as that is what our current pipes are designed to transport.

The studies that did use WTI as the comparing variable did find that temperature, pressure and corrosiveness are higher for the transport of dilbit oil than WTI (Casey-Lefkowitz, Shope and Swift).

The California State Fire Marshall’s Pipeline Risk Assessment found that pipelines operating between 130°F- 159°F were 24 times more likely to leak due to external corrosion (Swift). According to the same 2013 National Academy of Science study, “viscous crudes require more pumping energy to maintain flow velocity- translating to higher operating temperatures” (17). According to this study, these elevated pipeline temperatures can cause “disbonding of exterior coating.” Without this coating, external corrosion and leakage is much more likely.

Other red flags include the facts that the pipeline system in Alberta that relies on heavy crude had about sixteen times as many spills due to inside corrosion as the US system which carries light crude (Casey-Lefkowitz, Shope and Swift).

I’m not screaming causation, but I am not convinced that everything is fine either.

This is not a time to pick one side over another, but instead a time to acknowledge that we don’t have much data at all. The National Academy of Science report in June 2013 was the first time the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) had conducted a study on tar sands. According to an interview with Jane Kleeb, founder of Bold Nebreska, there is a current study that is examining the consequences of dilbit oil spills, but we don’t have the results yet. Again, the results are not in. What’s the point of research if we don’t even wait for the results? How could we approve Keystone XL which stretches across six states and stretches 1375 miles before knowing what the effects of an oil spill effects will be (McGowan “Pipeline Corrosion…”)? In addition, regulation is at a minimum. PHMSA is required to regulate the 167,000 miles of pipeline throughout the US and the organization is seriously understaffed. Therefore, they have a hard time consistently regulating all pipelines, and have to rely on much industry self-regulation (McGowan “Keystone XL…”). Not only that, but a congressionally mandated study by PHMSA concluded that the current basic pipelines used “will be exposed quite naturally to large spills” (24).

Unfortunately, the industry, too, has trouble self-regulating. Industries pride themselves in their remote sensors; however, these sensors haven’t been very reliable.

Sensors are supposed to alert headquarters in the case of a leak. However, according to an interview with Richard Kuprewicz, president of Accufacts, Inc, a pipeline consulting firm, leaks are hard to detect because they can easily be

mistaken for bubbles in the oil (Song “Few…”). Remote sensors are used by companies to detect a leak, but both leaks and oil bubbles create the same alert in the headquarters, and therefore this can cause confusion as to which event is taking place. The response to an oil bubble is to pump more oil through the pipeline (Casey-Lefkowitz, Shope and Swift). However, if that “oil bubble” is actually a leak, the results can be disastrous.

We saw this play out in the Marshall Spill in Kalamazoo, Mich., in 2010. Enbridge Energy Partner’s pipeline leaked dilbit for 17 hours before the spill was even confirmed by the company. This was ten days after they assured the public they could clean up a spill in just eight minutes. Although the Canadian headquarters were alerted by the remote sensors, they believed the leak to just be bubbles in the oil and therefore continued the operation (Song “Few Oil Pipeline Spills Detected…”).

TransCanada’s Final Environmental Impact Statement reported that the remote sensors had a threshold between 1.5-2%. In other words, the sensors would detect a spill over 1.5-2% of the total oil flow. For a project like Keystone that would transport 830,000 barrels per day, 500,000-700,000 gallons of tar sand leakage could go unnoticed daily.

Dilbit spills are much harder to clean up. In a typical conventional oil spill, the oil will float on top of the water, however in the case of dilbit spill, the lighter hydrocarbons evaporate and leave the bitumen to sink into the riverbed (Song “Narrow and Flawed…”). This makes the clean-up much harder (Song “A Dilbit Primer…”).

Dilbit Spills cleanups cost more money. The Marshall Spill cost $29,000 per barrel opposed to the conventional oil costs of $2000 per barrel (Song “A Dilbit Primer…”).

Dilbit Spills have serious health effects. A recent report by the Michigan Department of Community Health found that 58% of individuals living in the vicinity to experience “respiratory, gastrointestinal and neurological symptoms” (“Acute…”).

According to a Michigan Radio Fresh Air Report, the clean-up for the 843,000-gallon spill is still going on four years and $1 billion dollars later.

It’s easy to say that Enbridge Energy Partners are not the same as TransCanada, and therefore we should not be punishing TransCanada for their mistakes. This would be easy if TransCanada had a clean record, but unfortunately they don’t. Between June 2010 and September 2011, the first phase of the pipeline had already leaked 14 times. Twelve of these were so big that they had to be brought to federal authorities (McGowan “Keystone XL…”).

And these were the found cases. The Natural Resources Defense Council reports that 19 out of 20 leaks aren’t caught (Song). Most of the ones that are missed are the small ones which occur much more frequently.

Senator Warner, in your speech to President Obama, you emphasized an “all of the above” plan, but also expressed your hope to “find a route for this pipeline that would avoid that potential environmental damage [to Nebreska].”Although TransCanada rerouted their original Keystone XL plan, they only moved it by about twenty-five miles. The pipeline would still cross the Sandhills and Aquifer, and pose a serious environmental and health threat (Jane Kleeb).

The point I have hoped to make is that there are only a few “knowns.” Our right of safety cannot be assured in this project with inadequate data, regulations and response.

I say this to you not as someone who is just passing along a forwarded message from the Sierra Club, but rather, as someone who has done considerable research, reading papers and interviewing people on both sides of the table.

You may think that in a Republican majority, your vote against the pipeline wouldn’t make much of a difference. But to me, it would. I am watching your vote, Senator Warner, because as a Virginia resident, you are representing me. As someone who has done extensive research, I do not feel comfortable with you voting for this pipeline. We are at a point of uncertainty. A point with not enough data, regulations or response mechanisms. This is not just a trivial run, this is a

project that could negatively affect the lives of millions and destroy “our America the beautiful.” This project should only pass when we are 100% certain that human safety will not be compromised. We are not there yet.

I know this decision isn’t easy, but the beauty of a good politician is that he or she can make the right decision in hard circumstances. As a student who wants nothing more than a bright, clean and safe future, I ask that you listen to my voice, look at my research and vote against the Keystone XL Pipeline.

All my best,

Talia Schmitt The College of William & Mary tjschmitt@email.wm.edu

Works Cited

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Casey-Lefkowitz, Shope and Swift. “Tar Sands Pipelines Safety Risks.” NRDC, NWF, Pipeline Safety Trust and Sierra

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