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One Day After Obama Kills Keystone XL Pipeline Another Buffett-Owned Oil Tanker Train Derails

LuckyNed

HB All-State
Sep 9, 2015
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Always in your head
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-...derails-wisconsin-one-day-after-obama-kills-k


It must be somewhat ironic for the U.S. progressive moment that a day after Obama officially slammed the seal shut on Transcanada's Keystone XL pipeline after a seven year "review" (and days after the company itself withdrew its application, something which the admin ignored just so it could have the final say on the mater), moments ago an oil tanker train derailed north of Alma, Wisconsin along the Mississippi River 80 miles south of Minneapolis, with at least 32 cars off the tracks.

The train belongs to BNSF - a company owned by Warren Buffett and best known being directly involved in most of the recent oil train accidents. As such, this is the latest accident involving and best known being directly involved in most of the recent oil train accidents. As such, this is the latest accident involving commodities, in a year where this "safe" Buffett-endorsed medium of transportation has already seen a record number of accidents.

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Never really understood environmentalist opposition to the pipeline. The oil is getting moved one way or the other and moving it by rail/truck adds more to global warming than a pipeline. Oh well...
 
Never really understood environmentalist opposition to the pipeline. The oil is getting moved one way or the other and moving it by rail/truck adds more to global warming than a pipeline. Oh well...
To libs it's not about sound science, it about BHO's attempt at legacy
 
Now imagine the size of the disaster if an oil pipeline would have ruptured.

Well, when they do spring a leak the don't tend to vaporize people.

PORTLAND, Maine (NEWS CENTER) -- Two groups gathered in Portland's Monument Square Monday to commemorate the second anniversary of the Lac-Megantic, Quebec train derailment, and to advocate for cleaner energy.

Forty-seven people were killed and a large chunk of downtown Lac-Megantic destroyed when an unmanned 72-car train jumped the track. More than 60 tankers derailed and several exploded.

http://www.wcsh6.com/story/news/loc...y-vigil-about-lac-megantic-disaster/29767987/

 
Well, when they do spring a leak the don't tend to vaporize people.

Well, yes, they do...

From 1994 through 2013, the U.S. had 745 serious incidents with gas distribution, causing 278 fatalities and 1059 injuries, with $110,658,083 in property damage.[34]

From 1994 through 2013, there were an additional 110 serious incidents with gas transmission, resulting in 41 fatalities, 195 injuries, and $448,900,333 in property damage.[35]

From 1994 through 2013, there were an additional 941 serious incidents with gas all system type, resulting in 363 fatalities, 1392 injuries, and $823,970,000 in property damage.[36]

A recent Wall Street Journal review found that there were 1,400 pipeline spills and accidents in the U.S. 2010-2013. According to the Journal review, four in every five pipeline accidents are discovered by local residents, not the companies that own the pipelines.[37]
 
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Well, yes, they do...

From 1994 through 2013, the U.S. had 745 serious incidents with gas distribution, causing 278 fatalities and 1059 injuries, with $110,658,083 in property damage.[34]

From 1994 through 2013, there were an additional 110 serious incidents with gas transmission, resulting in 41 fatalities, 195 injuries, and $448,900,333 in property damage.[35]

From 1994 through 2013, there were an additional 941 serious incidents with gas all system type, resulting in 363 fatalities, 1392 injuries, and $823,970,000 in property damage.[36]

A recent Wall Street Journal review found that there were 1,400 pipeline spills and accidents in the U.S. 2010-2013. According to the Journal review, four in every five pipeline accidents are discovered by local residents, not the companies that own the pipelines.[37]

Ethanol was discounted by Sooner, so transitively you cannot use gas.

Keystone was an oil pipeline proposal.
 
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Pipelines rupture. No matter what they happen to be carrying. You can argue semantics, but it won't change the fact that accidents happen.
And, the results can be devasting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalamazoo_River_oil_spill

The Kalamazoo River oil spill occurred in July 2010 when a pipeline operated by Enbridge (Line 6B) burst and flowed into Talmadge Creek, a tributary of the Kalamazoo River. A six-foot break in the pipeline resulted in the largest inland oil spill, and one of the costliest spills in U.S. history. The pipeline carries diluted bitumen (dilbit), a heavy crude oil from Canada's Athabasca oil sands to the United States. Following the spill, the volatile hydrocarbon diluents evaporated, leaving the heavier bitumen to sink in the water column. Thirty-five miles of the Kalamazoo River were closed for clean-up until June 2012, when portions of the river were re-opened. On March 14, 2013 the Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) ordered Enbridge to return to dredge portions of the river to remove submerged oil and oil-contaminated sediment.
 
Tax evasion? Tell me how using the legally written tax code (which he has freqiently criticized as being unfair towards the wealthy) makes him a criminal? Are you trying to destroy the base of my fortune (B/H Classs B stocks)? You asshole!

Stop supporting the politically controlling 1%'ers
 
Tax evasion? Tell me how using the legally written tax code (which he has freqiently criticized as being unfair towards the wealthy) makes him a criminal? Are you trying to destroy the base of my fortune (B/H Classs B stocks)? You asshole!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/29/warren-buffett-taxes-berkshire-hathaway_n_941099.html

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/201...n-buffett-owned-company-sued-for-tax-evasion/

http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/38511/warren-buffett-arrested-for-tax-evasion/
 
Buffett should be in prison for his tax evasion issues, he is a bum.
So you are placing the blame on Buffett for one of the companies under the Berkshire Hathaway umbrella for trying to lower their taxes? Makes sense. Maybe we can start putting the bankers and CEOs away as well. And to make room for them, we can release the thousands of petty criminals locked up due to dubious reasons.
 
Crude oil is moving around the world, around our country, around pristine wilderness, around our cities and towns. It’s going to keep moving, will undoubtedly increase during our new energy boom, so what is the safest way to move it?

The short answer is: truck worse than train worse than pipeline worse than boat(Oilprice.com). But that’s only for human death and property destruction. For the normalized amount of oil spilled, it’s truck worse than pipeline worse than rail worse than boat (Congressional Research Service). Different yet again is for environmental impact (dominated by impact to aquatic habitat), where it’s boat worse than pipeline worse than truck worse than rail.

So it depends upon what your definition is for worse. Is it death and destruction? Is it amount of oil released? Is it land area or water volume contaminated? Is it habitat destroyed? Is it CO2 emitted?

In both the United States and Canada, more crude oil, petroleum products, and natural gas are transported in pipelines than by all other modes combined, using the unit of ton-mile which is the number of tons shipped over number of miles (The Fraser Institute).

In the U.S., 70% of crude oil and petroleum products are shipped by pipeline. 23% of oil shipments are on tankers and barges over water. Trucking only accounts for 4% of shipments, and rail for a mere 3%. In Canada, it’s even more lopsided. Almost all (97%) of natural gas and petroleum products are transported by pipelines (Canadian Energy Pipeline Association).

Amid a North American energy boom and a lack of pipeline capacity, crude oil shipping on rail is suddenly increasing. The trains are getting bigger and towing more and more tanker cars. From 1975 to 2012, trains were shorter and spills were rare and small, with about half of those years having no spills above a few gallons (EarthJustice.org). Then came 2013, in which more crude oil was spilled in U.S. rail incidents than was spilled in the previous thirty-seven years.

The question is: which is safest and which should we invest in most? Take two spills for comparison.

The Quebec train wreck last year killed 47 people and spilled 1.5 million gallons of crude onto land (Bloomberg.com). The Enbridge pipeline rupture in 2010 spilled over a million gallons of similar crude into the Kalamazoo River but did not kill anyone (Wikipedia).

Contamination of water is generally much worse for the environment than contamination of land as it spreads quickly over more area and impacts more species and habitat. But killing people makes a big difference. I don’t want to put a price tag on human life, but the Government has, and it’s about $8 million a person (NYTimes).

So the Quebec train derailment cost over $400 million in human life, and will cost another $150 million or so for clean-up and rebuilding the town. The Enbridge pipeline cost no human lives but will cost about a billion dollars to clean-up and, like the Exxon Valdez, will never really succeed.

Note: using this value of $8 million a person, we 300 million Americans are worth $2.4 quadrillion, hmm…maybe not a good number. If we use our net value for America as a whole, about $75 trillion, divide by 300 million people, then the average value of a human life in America would be $250,000. So the Quebec train derailment cost less than $12 million in human life. Thus the danger of trying to gauge the value of a human life.

These are not easy questions and one’s vested interest has a great deal of sway in the answer. You really do need to pick your poison.

Like always, it will probably come down to money. And it won’t be about jobs (Pipeline Jobs), regardless of which end of the spectrum you believe, because there just isn’t enough jobs to matter compared to the value of the oil itself and the refinery capacity. It’s simply cheaper and quicker to transport by pipeline than by rail or by truck. The difference in cost is about $50 billion a year for shipping via the Keystone versus rail, totally eclipsing any economic effect of jobs in either direction.

A rail tank car carries about 30,000 gallons (÷ 42 gallons/barrel = about 700 barrels). A train of 100 cars carries about 3 million gallons (70,000 barrels) and takes over 3 days to travel from Alberta to the Gulf Coast, about a million gallons per day. The Keystone will carry about 35 million gallons per day (830,000 barrels). This puts pressure on rail transport to get bigger and bigger, and include more cars per train, the very reason that crude oil train wrecks have dramatically increased lately.

The Congressional Research Service estimates that transporting crude oil by pipeline is cheaper than rail, about $5/barrel versus $10 to $15/barrel (NYTimes.com). But rail is more flexible and has 140,000 miles of track in the United States compared to 57,000 miles of crude oil pipelines. Building rail terminals to handle loading and unloading is a lot cheaper, and less of a hassle, than building and permitting pipelines.

It isn’t acceptable to just say we shouldn’t be moving oil, because we will for the next decade or more, no matter what. So, keeping in mind the difference between death/damage to humans and damage to the environment, which would you choose?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesco...poison-for-crude-pipeline-rail-truck-or-boat/
 
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