The Pros And Cons Of The Keystone Pipeline

Trading the resource called oil became a popular demand in most countries especially The United States of America. Canada started to become richer with money from this a resource. The U.S. wanted a more efficient way to get their oil from Canada, so the U.S. and Canada created a Keystone pipeline to deliver this oil from one country to the next. Over the years a new proposition came along to build another pipeline called the Keystone pipeline XL for an even more efficient way to deliver oil. With this new idea, a giant controversy was born. The dynamic controversy between the two sides of the Keystone pipeline being created in Canada has sparked arguments across Canada about the pros and cons of this project.

To start with the pros of

This new pipeline will carry a ton of oil across the country each day. “The 1,179-mile long pipeline is expected to transport 830,000 barrels of bitumen per day from the Athabasca tar sands in Alberta, Canada, to an existing pipeline in Steele City, Nebraska, from where the crude will be moved to its refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.” (Johnson, Ron. “Battle Lines Being Drawn Over Keystone XL Again.” Earth Island Institute, 29 Mar. 2017, ). This method compared to other methods of carrying oil such as trucks or trains carrying the oil is way quicker. An average trucker carrying the oil can hold about 9,000 gallons of oil total and those truckers usually take a long time to drive a couple miles, but from Canada to parts of Texas would take days just to take 9,000 gallons of oil. “Our present fleet only handles 4% of our needs, so shipping by truck instead of the Keystone XL would take another million-and-a-half tanker trucks.” Transportation by train is also pretty quick but still not close to the effectiveness of the Keystone Pipeline XL.

One main con would be the environmental factor. Environmentalists say that a leak from a pipeline carrying heavy oil-sand petroleums could cause environmental damage than a standard oil pipeline. On November 16, 2017, a total of 210,000 gallons of oil leaked in South Dakota. That alone is a ton of oil, though the worst part about it is they don't know what caused the leak so it is possible it could happen again."We want to find out, was there a crack in the pipe? We don't know. We want to get that information," Flute said. (Cuevas, Mayra, and Steve Almasy. “Keystone Pipeline Leaks 210,000 Gallons of Oil in South Dakota.” CNN, Cable News Network, 17 Nov. 2017). Oil leaking can cause a ton of issues and problems to the environment. It can kill and destroy whole ecosystems and kill multiple species of wildlife super fast. Oil leaks could also be very deadly to humans as well. If an oil leak happened in a water stream or supply it could infect our drinking water or have no water for hours or even days. Oil also contaminates food supply like fish and birds. It kills these animals by the animals ingesting or getting covered by oil which leads to organ failure and death. The Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1889 released 26,000 gallons of oil which is a lot less than the oil spill in South Dakota. “The Exxon Valdez oil spill killed somewhere