Why Canadian Tar Sands are the Most Environmentally Destructive Project on Earth

Our report reveals the following startling facts about the tar sands and petcoke.

• Petcoke in the tar sands is turning American refineries into coal factories.
  • There is 24 percent more CO₂ embedded in a barrel of tar sands bitumen than in a barrel of light oil.

• • 15 to 30 percent of a barrel of tar sands bitumen can end up as petcoke depending on the upgrading and refining process used.
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• Of 134 operating U.S. refineries in 2012, 59 are equipped to produce petcoke.
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• U.S. refineries produced more than 61.5 million tons of petcoke in 2011—enough to fuel 50 average U.S. coal plants each year.
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• In 2011, more than 60 percent of U.S petcoke production was exported.
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• Keystone XL will fuel five coal plants and thus emit 13 percent more CO₂ than the U.S. State Department has previously considered.

• Nine of the refineries close to the southern terminus of Keystone XL have nearly 30 percent of U.S. petcoke production capacity, over 50,000 tons a day.

• The petcoke produced from the Keystone XL pipeline would fuel 5 coal plants and produce 16.6 million metric tons of CO₂ each year.

• These petcoke emissions have been excluded from State Department emissions estimates for the Keystone XL pipeline. Including these emissions raises the total annual emissions of the pipeline by 13 percent above the State Department’s calculations.

• Cheap petcoke helps the coal industry.
  • As a refinery byproduct, petcoke is “priced to move,” selling at roughly a 25 percent discount to conventional coal.
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• Rising petcoke production associated with tar sands and heavy oil production is helping to make coal fired power generation dirtier and cheaper—globally.
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• From January 2011 to September 2012, the U.S. exported more than 8.6 million tons of petcoke to China, most of which was likely burnt in coal-fired power plants.
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• “PetKoch”: The largest global petcoke trader in the world is Florida based Oxbow Corporation, owned by William Koch—the brother of Charles and David Koch.

• Oxbow Carbon has donated $4.25 million to GOP Super PAC s, making it the one of the largest corporate donors to super PACs.

• Oxbow also spent over $1.3 million on lobbyists in 2012.

As mentioned above, the impacts of petcoke on the local and global environment have not been considered by regulatory bodies in assessing the impacts of the tar sands.

Petcoke’s full impacts must be considered by the European Union in its debate on the Fuel Quality Directive, by the U.S. State Department in its consideration of the climate impacts of the Keystone XL pipeline, and by Canadian, American and European governments in tar sands policies across the board.

Increasing petcoke use is a clear result of the increasing production of tar sands bitumen. Petcoke is a seldom discussed yet highly important aspect of the full impacts of tar sands production. Factored into the equation, petcoke puts another strong nail in the coffin of any rational argument for the further exploitation of the tar sands.

Why Canadian Tar Sands are the Most Environmentally Destructive Project on Earth



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Canadian Tar Sand Pipeline Political Corruption

Keystone Pipeline Lobbyist Had Cozy Relationship With State Department Staffers, New Emails Show

Opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline proposal continued their assault Monday on what they consider a corrupt federal approval process for the project, releasing dozens of new email messages between State Department employees and a lobbyist for the company behind the pipeline, TransCanada.

The emails, part of a growing cache obtained by the environmental group Friends of the Earth, focus on the interaction between TransCanada lobbyist Paul Elliott, a former deputy campaign director for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's failed 2008 presidential bid, and representatives of the State Department, which is currently weighing approval of the Keystone XL project.

While no emails between Clinton and Elliott have been released, the newest messages reveal a cozy and solicitous relationship between Elliott and State Department staff -- particularly one member of the senior diplomatic staff at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, Marja Verloop.

"The emails between Verloop and Elliott are extremely friendly and illustrative of a cozy and complicitous relationship," Friends of the Earth said in a memo released Monday morning. "They are filled with emoticons and contain an invitation to visit Ottawa's 'winter wonderland,' acknowledgment that Elliott obtained his job as a lobbyist 'precisely' because of his connections, and an offer by Verloop to hand-deliver an invitation to Elliott. The emails also indicate that Elliott succeeded in securing multiple meetings between TransCanada and high-level officials at the State Department."

In one particular exchange from September of last year, Verloop is seen cheering for Elliott after he secured support for the pipeline from Democratic Montana Senator Max Baucus. "Go Paul!" Verloop writes. "Baucus support holds clout."

A previous cache of emails concerned interaction between Nora Toiv, a special assistant to Secretary Clinton's chief of staff, Cheryl Mills. Friends of the Earth suggested those emails provided "evidence of agency bias" and showed that "the State Department was doing favors for TransCanada during the Keystone XL review."

Last week, Friends of the Earth called on the Justice Department to open an investigation into Elliott for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires that "persons acting as agents of foreign principals in a political or quasi-political capacity to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of those activities."

State Department officials have previously argued that the email exchanges only demonstrate that Elliott -- an aggressive lobbyist by any light -- was nonetheless unable to gain audience with key agency decision makers, and was instead routed to lower-level staff with no influence over the permit application.

Friends of the Earth argued in a letter to DOJthat Elliott failed to register.

The $7 billion, 1,700-mile proposed Keystone XL pipeline would carry crude oil from Alberta across the border with Canada in Montana and traverse five other states before reaching refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast. Because the project would cross an international border, a permit is required from the State Department.

Intense opposition to the pipeline project by a variety of environmental groups and, increasingly,citizens in states where the pipeline would run, have delayed the issuance of a permit for years, but the State Department is expected to render a decision on the project before the end of this year.

Friends of the Earth, along with the Center for International Environmental Law and Corporate Ethics International, sued Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last May after repeated attempts to obtain correspondence between Elliott and the agency through the Freedom of Information Act were rebuffed.

In late August, however, the State Department began to comply with the request, delivering 34 pages of emails. Friends of the Earth says more documents are expected.

reposted from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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