Dakota Access isn’t the only massive pipeline planned – TransCanada isn’t giving up on Energy East, which would run 2,580 miles – crossing Canada from west to east.
This is the company that fought for Keystone and is now suing the US under NAFTA. Energy East would put the entire East Coast and US Gulf at risk in addition to much of Canada.
After tar sands oil makes it through the Energy East pipeline, the oil would be shipped 2500 miles by tanker from Saint John, New Brunswick down the Atlantic Coast and across the Gulf of Mexico to Texas refineries.
900,000 barrels a day (70,000 more than Keystone) would threaten our coasts with spills no one knows how to clean up. And it would, of course, stoke our dangerous trajectory on climate change.
The Natural Resources Defense Council urges President Obama to ban such tankers in US waters. “Each tar sands-bearing tanker would be a floating catastrophe waiting to happen,” says Anthony Swift.
Amazingly, this threat to our waters isn’t even being considered, he says. Their report, “Tar Sands in the Atlantic Ocean: TransCanada’s Proposed Energy East Pipeline,” notes that six years after Enbridge’s pipeline spill in Michigan’s Kalamazoo River, miles remain polluted. And this is after spending $1.2 billion for clean up – the most expensive onshore oil spill in US history.
As many as 280 tankers a year would navigate a “shipping route notorious for extreme tides, dense fogs and treacherous weather,” including hurricanes.
Hundreds of miles of coastline would be at risk, including billion dollar commercial fisheries. And the sonic noise and potential ship strikes would cause great harm to whales, dolphins, sea turtles and other marine life.
It would also provide incentives to expand tar sands production in Canada.
Energy East is currently under a two-year regulatory review in Canada.
“TransCanada’s Energy East proposal is Keystone XL on steroids. It’s all risk and no reward for millions of Canadians and Americans, iconic landscapes, valuable fisheries and our climate,” says Joshua Axelrod, co-author of the report.. “The first step in stopping this dangerous project is to put our oceans off limits to tar sands tankers, and the president should do that now.”
There’s so much tar sands infrastructure planned it’s becoming difficult to keep track.
Enbridge Wants to Merge
Canada’s Enbridge has offered $28 billion in stock to buy another pipeline bully – Houston-based Spectra Energy Corp. – to make it the “FedEx of the business.”
Besides the Kalamazoo River tragedy, Enbridge pipelines have ruptured more than 800 times since 1999. Its pipelines cross the US-Canadian border and includes some pretty shady deals.
Spectra has pipelines in the Marcellus basin in the eastern US and wants to expand across New England. When residents and government officials opposed a pipeline in a Boston neighborhood, Spectra took the city to court and won by taking eminent domain.
What Would Trump Do as President?
Besides reviving the Keystone pipeline, Trump would be all in on fossil fuels, setting us back a decade.
He calls climate change a “hoax” and “con job,” promises to bring back all the coal jobs, and have a renaissance of the fossil fuel industry. Say goodbye to renewable energy. He would tear up the Paris Climate Agreement in his “America First Energy Plan.”
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