Do you like clean drinking water or would you rather drink water full of petroleum products? Sounds like a stupid question doesn’t it and yet the present government wants to increase the length of the Keystone pipeline which would put it over some of the biggest aquifers in our country. They claim there is no danger so what are we all scared of? Why not let them have what they want? Well one of the reasons it would be very foolish to endorse this extension to the pipeline is the fact oil pipelines have been leaking like a sieve. When you have a bunch of politicians who have ulterior motives for promoting things like this, you just can’t believe what they are telling you, because it usually turns out being a pack of lies. The oil industry has some of the biggest lobbies in all of Washington and I am sure the over 370 legislators who have become millionaires since they were in office didn’t get that way because they were talented. I don’t know about you, but I am tired of listening to all the baloney that Washington has been telling us for decades.

Pipelines have traditionally leaked. In 2001 there were 16 pipeline leaks which were reported, we don’t know how many were not reported. Some of the pipelines carried oil and some carried natural gas. Some pipeline spills are not as bad as others, but a little oil in your water can go a long way and it certainly isn’t good for crops and such. Some of the leaks on oil pipelines are caused by accidents while others just happen. To give you an example a pipeline accident in 2001 in Taylor County, Texas happened when a bulldozer clipped a pipeline carrying oil. In this case not only a leak resulted, but a large fire. Another accident from that year with an oil pipeline happened in Oklahoma, where an oil pipeline ruptured and spilled 150,000 gallons of oil into nearby fields. Needless to say the crops didn’t fare very well, not only was there contamination but a huge loss in revenue for the farmers’ lost crops.

Every year we have oil pipelines leaking oil for one reason or another. How anyone can tell us  putting a pipeline from Canada across the United States is perfectly safe has to be lying. Even if someone in a position of authority was told this they would have to have enough intelligence to know there is no such thing as a guarantee these pipelines will not leak and as a matter of history there has been a tremendous amount of damage caused by leaking pipelines. Sometimes pipelines are not built with enough shut off valves. One natural gas pipeline rupture caused a tremendous fire and couldn’t be shut off for hours because there was no shut off valves that could be activated. It reminds me of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico where the oil rig that caused the spill wasn’t built with an automatic shut off valve to stop oil from leaking out if the drill hole containment failed.

Sometimes fraud is involved. In 2003 the owners of a Texas – New Mexico Pipeline Company were found guilty of fraud, gross negligence and willful misconduct. They knew their pipeline was leaking beneath a Midland, Texas residential subdivision, so they sold it to another company presumably without telling them about the leak. Documents were found showing they knew about it and that the oil had contaminated drinking water where these people lived. As much as 13,000 barrels of oil had leaked into their water. Some people might say hey you’re talking about ancient history here, so to these people I would say let’s talk about more recent pipeline failures. In 2016 a six-inch crude oil pipeline broke near Rozet, Wyoming. 1500 gallons of crude oil spilled into a creek bed. On April 2 the same year the TransCanada Corporation’s Keystone Pipeline was seen to be leaking by a resident who lived near Freeman, South Dakota. The pipeline had cracked and 16,800 gallons of tar sands had leaked out and the company hadn’t seemed to detect it. On March 22, 2016 a petroleum pipeline in Harwood, North Dakota spilled out 4000 gallons of gasoline. On April 17, 2016 a petroleum pipeline failed in Wabash County, Illinois it covered the Wabash River with an oil sheen and it was estimated about 48,000 gallons of diesel fuel had spilled. I also think is important to understand the figures we are being given. We have no way to know if the amount of spillage is being underestimated. I have a feeling the companies are afraid if we knew the true extent of some of these spills we could cause them a lot of trouble.

In January 2015 there were so many leaks on the Evangeline Pipeline near Cameron Parish in Louisiana that an order had to be issued to the company to take corrective action. Also in January the Bridger Pipeline, which transports 42,000 barrels a day of crude, had a pipeline failure and dumped crude oil into the Yellowstone River and contaminated the water supply 10 miles south of Glendive, Montana. The company stated they were able to shut the leak down within an hour and about 30,000 gallons of crude was spilled and somehow another 28,000 gallons of crude was lost. I would like to know how crude oil is lost in a spill. That same month a pipeline burst in Honolulu, Hawaii, it had become so corroded it ruptured. The estimate of spillage was 42,000 gallons. These weren’t the only events in January 2015. There were several more and events like this continued throughout the year.

Does anyone still think running an oil pipeline, or any type of pipeline including gas pipelines across our country is safe? There have been hundreds of accidents and leaks, and if we knew the true story it could turn out to be thousands and this doesn’t even count all the ones that happen at sea and are caused by problems with oil rigs and oil tankers. The sad part of all of this is there is enough free energy available to us to do away with most of the oil and gas pipelines. Oil companies are doing everything within their power to slow down our conversion to this type of energy. In the end, since the oil companies have so much cash on hand, they may ultimately be the ones who buy up the free energy companies. They have a long history of buying up companies which were in their way. I think the only way to beat these guys is for the free energy companies to create strong lobbies of their own.