Open Mic January 13

Maxie, my friend,
If you are actu­ally going to make the argu­ment that a pipeline “threat­ens the lives of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans”, I don’t see how it is pos­si­ble to have a ratio­nal dis­cus­sion on the sub­ject with you.  Please show evi­dence of one analy­sis, from any­where, that sup­ports this asser­tion.
Have you ever done any haz­ard analy­sis of indus­trial processes?  Made any in-​​depth study of any indus­trial acci­dents for what really caused them?  Had any train­ing in indus­trial process risk/​benefit analy­sis?  Done any design or imple­men­ta­tion of indus­trial processes?  Ever sized a pip­ing sys­tem or ana­lyzed a pump net­work for flow and pres­sure drop?  Ever devel­oped an inter­lock con­trol strat­egy?
I have done plenty of these things and I can tell you with great con­fi­dence  that any ratio­nal analy­sis of the risks of  pipeline trans­port vs rail­car and/​or tanker will show that pipeline trans­port is much safer and much more secure.
I think you are in a lit­tle over your head on this one, to be honest.

OK Maxie, now we’re get­ting some­where.  I notice you have sub­tly changed your argu­ment to “affect the water sup­ply of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans”, rather than “threaten the lives of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans”.  So at least you rec­og­nize the fool­ish­ness of the ear­lier asser­tion that DC made.
I cer­tainly don’t deny the pos­si­bil­ity of a leak.  How­ever there are many things that can be done to min­i­mize this pos­si­bil­ity, and to min­i­mize the pos­si­ble amount of envi­ron­men­tal dam­age caused by a leak.
But I do think that it’s impor­tant to rec­og­nize the basic fact that pipeline trans­port is safer than rail and tanker trans­port.  A pipeline leak can be stopped by clos­ing valves, turn­ing off pumps, etc.  Sen­sors can be installed that can detect leaks based on pres­sure drop, flow rate, etc.
Plus the petro­leum that is being sent through the pipeline is extremely thick and vis­cous.  It must be heated and kept hot to enable it to be pumped through the pipeline.  Once it is out in the open it will cool rapidly and the vis­cos­ity will increase, hope­fully min­i­miz­ing the amount that seeps through to the ground­wa­ter source.
Once there is a sig­nif­i­cant rup­ture or fail­ure of a tanker hull it is very dif­fi­cult to con­tain the acci­dent.  There is no valve to shut off to stop the flow of oil to the leak.  And a spill in the ocean is more dif­fi­cult to con­tain than a spill on land.
Now that you seem to be think­ing some­what ratio­nally, do you deny that pipeline trans­port of oil is safer and less envi­ron­men­tally haz­ardous than tanker trans­port?  If so, I’d like to see evi­dence that backs your assertion.

AW — OK, so as an engi­neer do you think that trans­port­ing the oil to China via pipeline and tanker to refine into gaso­line, diesel fuel, and kerosene in Chinese-​​owned refiner­ies is more eco­nom­i­cally and eco­log­i­cally sound than trans­port­ing the oil to the US Gulf Coast via pipeline to refine in US-​​owned refiner­ies?
Because those are the two options that seem to be on the table.
 

Well, I would argue it helps all of us by help­ing to bal­ance our trade deficit.  The domes­tic price of the prod­uct is not the key point.  Gaso­line, diesel fuel, kerosene, and a hun­dred other petro­leum based prod­ucts are value added prod­ucts.  This is what our econ­omy should be based on, adding value to prod­ucts more effi­ciently than other coun­tries.
Wouldn’t you rather see that value added in the US than over­seas?  Wouldn’t you rather have US jobs in the refin­ing indus­try and a myr­iad of sup­port­ing indus­tries than send­ing those jobs to China or some other coun­try?
How do you think the envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions for US refin­ers are com­pared to Chi­nese refineries?

MWeiss — Global ecol­ogy, of course.  You aren’t one of those NIMBY lib­er­als, are you?
There is already con­sid­er­able infra­struc­ture and exper­tise in the Gulf Coast area for refin­ing and petro­chem­i­cals.  The weather is much more con­ducive to indus­trial oper­a­tions (I’ll take the occa­sional hur­ri­cane over 4 months a year of sub­freez­ing tem­per­a­tures).  Dis­tri­b­u­tion pat­terns for exist­ing pipelines and other trans­porta­tion meth­ods are already estab­lished with the Gulf Coast as a refin­ing hub.
Given all this I would argue there would be a lot less eco­log­i­cal and eco­nomic dis­rup­tion due to the con­struc­tion of the pipeline rather than estab­lish­ing a whole new refin­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion infrastructure.

Chain — actu­ally, no.  Most refined prod­ucts have much higher volatil­ity and much lower vis­cos­ity than crude oil.  So spills of refined prod­ucts at sea evap­o­rate more eas­ily, diss­pate more read­ily, and are more eas­ily con­sumed by bac­te­ria than crude.  They also tend not to be as harm­ful to larger organ­isms because they are less likely to cre­ate dan­ger­ous “coat­ings” on the organ­ism and there­fore be ingested.