"Portland pipeline at center of fierce fight in Maine" by Colin Nickerson | Globe Correspondent, April 21, 2013
SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine — Over seven decades, the Portland pipeline has propelled some 5 billion gallons of crude oil across the mountains and beneath the pristine waters of northern New England to refineries in Quebec.
Aside from a few small spills years ago, the 236-mile-long colossus of steel pipes and powerful pumping stations boasts a sterling record. In the upcountry towns through which it passes, the underground pipeline has drawn little notice since it was constructed in 1941.
Until now.
Environmentalists are bitterly fighting a plan to reverse the flow of the pipeline and send Canadian crude surging to offloading piers on Casco Bay. This would provide Canada — whose Alberta-centered oil industry is suffering from too much supply and too little access to overseas markets — its first direct pipeline to a year-round, deep-water port.
The hullabaloo has pushed the low-key pipeline operator into a broader, angrier North American controversy over several proposed pipelines to transport oil extracted from western Canada’s tar sands. Perhaps best known is the battle over the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would stretch nearly 1,200 miles from Alberta across the American Heartland to the Gulf of Mexico.
Related: Piping You This Post
From an engineering vantage, the Portland project would be small potatoes. No big construction is envisioned. New pumps would be installed at company facilities in Montreal, a couple burn-off vents hoisted in South Portland.
“All that would happen is that molecules would be flowing in a different direction within the same safe design criteria,’’ said Larry D. Wilson, president and chief executive of Portland Pipe Line Corp.
But opponents see a ploy to make northern New England the first express conduit for what is viewed as the most polluting form of crude, opening the door to increased use and environmentally damaging production of the fuel. Detractors say carbon dioxide and other gases emitted during extraction and processing of Alberta’s ultra-heavy crude known as bitumen contribute to global warming — and spills would do greater harm.
Not to worry about the first one then.
The northern Alberta oil sands comprise one of the richest lodes on earth, a prize that might transform Canada into a true energy superpower if only it could export more easily to Europe and Asia, as well as to the United States. In 2005, the country shot past the Persian Gulf region as America’s number one source of imported oil, with some 2.9 million barrels of crude and other petroleum products crossing the border daily, according to US figures.
Most of this is bitumen crude. The strip-mine-like removal of bitumen releases some 16 percent more greenhouse gases than the drilling of conventional crude, according to a recent study by the US State Department.
“The Portland pipeline isn’t some obscure local issue — it’s a fuse leading straight to one of the most dangerous carbon bombs on the planet,’’ said Bill McKibben, a professor of environmental studies at Middlebury College in Vermont.
The company, startled by the onslaught, bristles at attempts to cast it as a villainous would-be sower of environmental havoc.
“We’re dedicated to safety, respectful of the environment, and have earned our reputation for being a good neighbor the hard way — by being one,’’ said Thomas A. Hardison, director of operations.
The Portland pipeline was built just before the start of World War II as a desperate hedge against marauding German submarines. Canada joined the war against Hitler two years before the United States, and tankers carrying crude to Montreal made easy targets for U-boats at the approaches to the St. Lawrence River. The pipeline meant oil carriers no longer had to make the exposed passage to keep Quebec refineries chugging.
I told you that guy or the group he led makes my paper nearly everyday.
The present 24-inch and 18-inch diameter pipes were laid in 1965....
But the company has struggled in recent years as Canada’s appetite for imported oil diminished while domestic production boomed....
Reversing the flow to tap Canada’s growing hunger for foreign oil markets could be the only way to save the company and the jobs of its 43 employees, some of whom have held good-paying jobs there for decades. The pipeline also has made Portland one of the busiest oil ports on the Eastern Seaboard; even today — despite Canada’s diminishing demand — some 70 tankers a year offload from the far corners of oildom.
“It’s a very vital asset for Maine’s port economy,’’ said John H. Henshaw, executive director of the Maine Port Authority. “It’s important in terms of ships coming in, services provided [to ships and crew], local employment, taxes — all these things.’’
But what seemed, at first, a far-fetched crusade against the pipeline has gained surprising traction not only among ardent greens but also mainstream politicians and some ordinary citizens. The issue has been inflamed by last month’s pipeline spill in Mayflower, Ark. — involving Alberta crude — and a much larger 2010 pipeline rupture that released more than 800,000 gallons of tar sands crude into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River.
That spill in Arkansas has been kept really quiet.
Related:
Arkansas spill raises concerns on piping tar sands oil through New England
April Fool: Arkansas Energy Woes
Globe Identifies a Post About Arkansas
"A man sentenced to life in prison without parole when he was 14 years old deserves a new sentencing hearing, Arkansas’s highest court ruled Thursday. The state Supreme Court ordered a new sentencing hearing for Kuntrell Jackson, whose case was one of two that led to a US Supreme Court decision last year throwing out mandatory life sentences without parole for juveniles. “We agree with the state’s concession that Jackson is entitled to the benefit of the Supreme Court’s opinion in his own case,” Justice Josephine Linker Hart wrote in the Arkansas Supreme Court’s unanimous decision. It is not clear when Jackson’s new hearing will be held, but justices said he may present evidence about his age and the nature of the crime. Jackson was sentenced to life in prison after the shooting death of a store clerk during an attempted robbery in 1999. Another boy shot the clerk, but Jackson was present. Jackson is now 27 years old and is serving his sentence at a maximum-security prison in Arkansas."
I'm not saying that item is unimportant, not at all. The exposure of the fraud that is the AmeriKan justice system is important. I just wanted you to see the limited coverage that Exxon oil spill is getting in New England's flagship.
At the Other End of the Mississippi
Mired in the Muck of the Lousiana Marshes
That's the Kalamazoo coverage.
Also see:
Maine Might See Oil Spill
Sunday Globe Special: Taken For Granted
Tugboat spills at least 300 gallons of gear oil
A one-day wonder that one.
Eighteen members of Congress, including Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, have signed a stinging letter demanding stringent federal environmental review of the pipeline proposal. In recent months, protestors staged a sizeable antipipeline street demonstration in Portland, while 29 Vermont communities — none located on the pipeline’s track — passed Town Meeting resolutions banning “tar oil’’ from the state.
Last week, a Vermont regulator said the Portland pipeline will have to undergo scrutiny under the state’s rigorous Act 250 environmental law if the company seeks to reverse the flow. The logic is that crude passing in a different direction amounts to a “substantial change of use.’’
Seventy-five percent of imported Canadian oil, much of it bitumen, already reaches the United States via an intricate web of pipelines. What Canada sorely lacks is a dedicated pipeline to carry huge volumes of crude fromlandlocked Alberta to ice-free ports, such as Portland.
A plan to build a pipeline across the Canadian Rockies to British Columbia has stalled in the face of furious opposition. The Obama administration so far has blocked Keystone. There’s a vague proposal to construct an all-Canadian pipeline to New Brunswick on the Bay of Fundy, but that’s years away.
That should leave Portland Pipe Line occupying the catbird’s seat.
“Instead,” said Wilson, the company president, “we’re in the crosshairs.”
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Related: N.H. governor asks for thorough review on pipeline issue
Far off in the future(?):
"Florida is fourth state to sue over BP oil spill" by James L. Rosica | Associated Press, April 21, 2013
TALLAHASSEE — Florida filed a lawsuit Saturday against oil company BP and cement contractor Halliburton over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, becoming the fourth state to seek damages for the 2010 disaster.
The suit, among other things, faults BP for not changing the batteries on the rig’s blowout preventer. Halliburton was blamed for installing faulty cement barriers that were supposed to gird the well against oil pressure.
The 40-page complaint by Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi was filed in US District Court in Panama City. The federal court has jurisdiction under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990.
Which was in response to the Valdez oil spill in Alaska under Bush the First!
Bondi filed suit on the three-year anniversary of the tragedy that killed 11 rig workers in the Gulf of Mexico. Florida is now the fourth state to sue over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill; Mississippi sued on Friday. Cities and counties along the coast also have filed.
A BP spokesman declined to comment and Halliburton spokesmen were not immediately available. A note on BP’s website Saturday from BP America chairman and president John Mingé said, ‘‘On the third anniversary of the tragic accident in the Gulf of Mexico, our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of our 11 colleagues who died and those injured.’’
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Also see: Trying Times at BP
