Northwest Tribes unite against giant coal, oil projects

Lummi hereditary chief Bill James, on the beach at Cherry Point, says saving it is to preserve “the tribe’s very way of life.” It’s the site of an ancient Lummi village. (Alan Berner/The Seattle Times)

Northwest Tribes unite against giant coal, oil projects

As governments, tribal nations are uniquely empowered in some of the biggest environmental fights in Washington and willing to use that power.

Seattle Times  January 16, 2016  By Lynda V. Mapes

 

CHERRY POINT, Whatcom County — On this last bit of undeveloped coast between a smelter and two oil refineries, SSA Marine wants to build the biggest coal export terminal in North America, to load up some of the largest ships afloat arriving up to 487 times a year, mostly from Asian ports.

The blockbuster $665 million proposal is one of many fossil fuel transport projects under review in the region — from oil pipeline expansions in B.C., to oil-by-rail facilities in Southwest Washington and another coal port in Longview.

And while thousands of people have turned out to protest Washington turning into one of the largest fossil fuel hubs in the country, Northwest tribes appear best positioned to win the fight.

“This is different from an environmental group coming in and saying ‘you shouldn’t do this.’ Here, agencies’ discretion is limited,” said Robert Anderson, director of the Native American Law Center at the University of Washington School of Law. “Tribes have treaty rights and the U.S. has trust responsibility to uphold those rights. That is the game-changing possibility here.”

It’s a high-stakes power play. There’s already been blowback in Congress from Republican lawmakers and, if the tribes lose, that could create a bad precedent for them in future battles.

But tribes are standing together against the projects.

“Coal is black death,” said Brian Cladoosby, chairman at the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community near La Conner who, as president of the National Congress of American Indians, has brought a national voice to the opposition.

“There is no mitigation,” Cladoosby said. “We have to make a stand before this very destructive poison they want to introduce into our backyards. We say no.”

The Lummi Nation has demanded the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is reviewing the so-called Gateway Pacific Terminal project, deny SSA’s permit application because it endangers the tribe’s treaty-protected fishing rights.

The Swinomish and Tulalip Tribes have sent similar letters to the Corps, and the Suquamish Tribe also is weighing in. “We have the same amount of commitment to treaty rights protection,” said Leonard Forsman chairman of the Suquamish tribe. “We are a team and we are working with them. We are very concerned about impacts on our fishery.”

The project is proposed in a state aquatic reserve and treaty protected fishing areas of five Washington Tribes. The uplands and waters are utilized by a menagerie of state and federally protected species, and what was once the best herring run in Puget Sound, already imperiled and targeted for recovery. The project also overlaps Xwe’chi’eXen, a village site and cemetery for at least 3,500 years and thousands of ancestors of the Lummi Nation.

Video at site: Bill James discusses the Lummi Nation’s opposition to the development of a coal port at Cherry Point. The Lummi are one of several Northwest tribes fighting the transport of fossil fuel through their lands. (Alan Berner / The Seattle Times)

But Cherry Point near Bellingham is regarded by the industry as a prime location for a new coal port. Already home to wharves for oil refineries and an aluminum smelter, the area’s deep water close to shore can accept the biggest ships afloat with no dredging, and has nearby rail access.

The Gateway terminal would move up to 48 million metric tons of coal a year — enough to cover 80 acres in five open stockpiles by the water, each 2,100 feet long and up to 70 feet high. As many as nine trains a day more than a mile and a half long would travel to and from the terminal, all the way from Montana and Wyoming. Every 18 hours, ships, many nearly three football fields long, would load up on coal at the 3,000-foot-long wharf.

Booming across the water in a tribal fishing boat toward Cherry Point, Lummi carver Jewell Praying Wolf James said he traces his lineage to some of the first sockeye fishers with reef net sites here.

To him, and to tribal cultural leader Al Scott Johnnie, the fishery means more than money. “There is a sense of place, a sense of belonging and a culture of the water, the air, the plants, the fish, and how you conduct your relationships,” Johnnie said.
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Company plans gravel island to extract Arctic offshore oil

Northstar Island, an artificial island in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska, is a site of oil and gas drilling. (U.S. Department of the Interior)

Company plans gravel island to extract Arctic offshore oil

12/13/2015    By DAN JOLING      Fire Engineering

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Arctic offshore drilling by Royal Dutch Shell PLC drew protests on two continents this year, but a more modest proposal for extracting petroleum where polar bears roam has moved forward with much less attention.

While Shell proposed exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea about 80 miles off Alaska's northwest coast, a Texas oil company wants to build a gravel island as a platform for five or more extraction wells that could tap oil 6 miles from shore in the Beaufort Sea.

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is deciding how to assess the environmental effect of a production plan for the Liberty Project by Hilcorp Alaska LLC, a subsidiary of Houston-based Hilcorp Energy Co.

A successful well would mean the first petroleum production in federal Arctic waters.

Hilcorp's plan for a 23-acre gravel island, about the size of 17.4 football fields, has drawn mixed reviews from conservationists and outright condemnation from environmentalists who believe the oil should stay in the ground.

Global warming is melting sea ice habitat beneath polar bears, walrus and ice seals, said Kristen Monsell, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity.

"The impacts of an oil spill on top of that could be devastating and would be nearly impossible to clean up," she said.....

....Hilcorp would create the island in Foggy Island Bay, 15 miles east of Prudhoe Bay, the largest oil field in North America. Last year, Hilcorp purchased 50 percent of Liberty assets from BP Exploration Alaska, which drilled at the site in 1997 and discovered an estimated 120 million barrels of recoverable oil.

BP considered building a gravel island and also "ultra-extended reach drilling" from shore. The drilling type was deemed technically unfeasible, Hilcorp spokeswoman Lori Nelson said.

Hilcorp would place conventional wells on the island, positioning them over the oil bearing rock sitting under the ocean floor.

"It's proven to be a safe and effective means for oil and gas development in the Arctic," Nelson said by email. "Alaska has a 30-year record of safely operating offshore in the Arctic."....

....For the Liberty project, trucks carrying gravel would travel by ice road to a hole cut in sea ice. The trucks would deposit 83,000 cubic yards of gravel into 19 feet of water. The work surface would be 9.3 acres surrounded by a wall, providing a barrier to ice, waves and wildlife.....

....Residents, Epstein said, worry that islands will affect the migration patterns of bowhead whales harvested by subsistence hunters. Because the oil would come from federal waters, residents would not see revenues, but would be the ones most harmed by any spill.

The project is near the Beaufort Boulder Patch, an area of undersea boulders where kelp and algae grow in contrast to the otherwise soft ocean bottom.

The environmental review won't be completed until at least 2017, and production could be several more years off.

At the end of production, Hilcorp says it would plug the wells and remove slope protection, allowing ice and waves to erode the island.    entire article here

 

Climate Science Denial Groups Offer to Hide Fossil Fuel Funding

Major Climate Science Denial Groups Offer to Hide Fossil Fuel Funding, Greenpeace Investigation Finds

By Graham Readfearn • Tuesday, December 8, 2015   DeSmogBlog 

 

An undercover investigation by environment group Greenpeace has found some of the world’s most vocal climate science denial groups were willing to accept cash from fossil fuel interests in return for writing articles and reports that reject the impacts of greenhouses gases.

Greenpeace operatives posing as representatives of coal and oil companies were told that while the reports could be produced, there were ways that the sources of funding could be hidden.

Academics affiliated with leading US academic institutions Princeton and Penn State universities are implicated in the Greenpeace research.

According to a report on the investigation at Greenpeace's EnergyDesk website, Princeton's Professor William Happer had revealed he had accepted cash from coal company Peabody Energy in return for providing testimony to US congress but had routed the cash through a climate denial group. Happer also offered his services but said that a new climate science denial group, CO2 Coalition, should be used to channel the funds.

Groups including the Global Warming Policy Foundation and Donors Trust are also alleged to have been complicit in providing “peer review” services for fossil fuel clients and, in the case of Donors Trust, in providing an untraceable route for the fossil fuel payments.

The story comes as Happer is preparing to give evidence to a congressional hearing of the Senate Subcomittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, chaired by Republican and presidential hopeful Ted Cruz. That hearing is scheduled for Tuesday December 8 and also calls fellow “sceptics” Dr John Christy, of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Dr Judith Curry of Georgia Institute of Technology and conservative commentator Mark Steyn.

A DeSmogBlog investigation into Donors Trust and its partner group Donors Capital Fund found that between 2005 and 2012, some $479 million of income to the two groups was untraceable. Of the amounts that were traceable, DeSmog found that $7.65 million had come from the Knowledge and Progress Fund (KPF). 

On the KPF board are oil billionaire and major Republican benefactor Charles Koch, his wife Liz and son Charles Chase Koch. Richard Fink, a Koch company director and long-standing aide to Charles Koch, is also a KPF director.

The Greenpeace investigation raises questions about the use of the Donors funds in financing climate science denial groups.  Donors Trust, together with oil giant Exxon, have also funded the work of Harvard-Smithsonian affiliated researcher Dr Willie Soon, who claims carbon dioxide cannot change the climate.

Greenpeace also claims that CO2 Coalition board member William O'Keefe, a former Exxon lobbyist, had suggested in an email to Happer that Donors Trust be used as a route to conceal cash from a fictional Middle eastern oil and gas company.

The investigation also targeted Happer's work with the London-based contrarian group the Global Warming Policy Foundation, founded by former UK chancellor Lord Nigel Lawson. Greenpeace wrote:

Professor Happer, who sits on the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council, was asked by undercover reporters if he could put the industry funded report through the same peer review process as previous GWPF reports they claimed to have been “thoroughly peer reviewed”. Happer explained that this process had consisted of members of the Advisory Council and other selected scientists reviewing the work, rather than presenting it to an academic journal.

 

He added: “I would be glad to ask for a similar review for the first drafts of anything I write for your client. Unless we decide to submit the piece to a regular journal, with all the complications of delay, possibly quixotic editors and reviewers that is the best we can do, and I think it would be fine to call it a peer review.”

Asked for comment by Greenpeace, the GWPF said in a statement that it rejected Greenpeace's investigation, saying any claims it had offered to put a fossil fuel commission report through its own version of peer review were a “fabrication”.

Aberdeen joins the UN People's Climate March!

From: Avaaz.org
slideshow at link

This weekend's Global Climate March broke records as the largest climate mobilization in history! From São Paulo to Sydney, 785,000 of us shook the ground in over 2,300 events in 175 countries, united in one voice calling for a 100% clean energy future to save everything we love. It was front page media worldwide, and the impact is already being felt at the summit here in Paris.

It’s nearly impossible to describe the powerful and diverse beauty of humanity that rose up yesterday, but these photos help:

London, UK

This is the movement our world has been waiting for. Many countries, from Bangladesh to Ireland, saw the largest climate marches in their history. In Australia, 120,000 people marched, in India, over 100,000. And in towns across the planet small groups of us joined together in beautiful local events. Even in Sana'a, Yemen, organisers went ahead with their march despite bombs falling close to the route!

Clockwise from top left: Melbourne, Helsinki, Berlin, Amsterdam, Bogotá, Jakarta

P.S. Click here for an Op-Ed from Avaaz' CEO, Ricken Patel, on this moment as a test of humanity.

No New Fossil Fuel Infrastructure! sign on letter: West Coast Cities People’s Declaration

Dear friends and allies,

On Nov. 12, 2015, Portland, OR, became the first city in the country (and possibly, the world--we're not sure) to pass a resolution opposing all new fossil fuel infrastructure in the city and its adjacent waterways. We in Portland will be spending the remaining 14 months while our mayor is in office making this resolution binding law-- a process we hope will show other cities how to do the same.

On Dec. 11-12, 2015, the mayors of all of the major west coast cities are coming to Portland, OR, to discuss (among other things) climate action by these cities. We are calling on all of these mayors of the major west coast cities who will be coming to Portland (San Diego, LA, San Jose, Oakland, San Francisco, Eugene, Tacoma, Seattle, Vancouver, B.C. and Honolulu), along with the mayors of smaller cities, and leaders of the Native American and First Nations tribes to oppose all new fossil fuel infrastructure.

We could use your help in the following ways.

1) Review the statement below or here:  and sign on, as an individual or organization.  Bill McKibben, Winona LaDuke, and Tom Goldtooth have been among our first signatories.

2) Share the statement far and wide, especially with friends and allies in west coast cities with the following groups of people in particular:

-- Labor unions

-- Government officials at all levels in all west coast cities

-- Any affiliated groups up and down the west coast of the US and Canada
-- Rising Tide or other groups to help us prepare a brilliant strategic actions in all of the cities and/or in Portland when the mayors come to town on Dec. 11-12.

--Outreach to the climate scientific community to get them on board

--Letters to the editor in small papers up and down the west coats, supporting this call
--Outreach to college campuses in west coast cities to get them on board.

3) If you have any spare funds, we are doing all of this on a shoestring budget, and could use donations! Donations link here

Thank you!

--Daphne Wysham
Sustainable Energy & Economy Network

Center for Sustainable Economy

Climate Action Coalition

West Coast Cities People’ Declaration: NO New Fossil Fuel Infrastructure, Just Transition Now

December 2015

We the undersigned organizations and their members in the states on the West Coast of the United States and the province of British Columbia in Canada call on leaders of the First Nations peoples of Canada and Native Americans of the U.S., Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, President Barack Obama of the United States, the premier of British Columbia, governors of U.S. states, city mayors, and other elected officials, and regulatory agencies to stand up for climate solutions by putting an end to the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure in our cities, our coastal ports, and communities and beginning the just transition to the new clean economy now. 

The scientific community, President Obama and other political and religious leaders have told us very clearly that we have arrived at a critical moment in human history when we either act now or we doom present and future generations to an escalating planetary crisis of catastrophic climate change. They tell us we must leave 80 percent of proven fossil fuel reserves in the ground, and leave all unproven reserves untouched.[1] Despite the growing scientific alarm, too many of our elected officials are continuing with business as usual, condoning the expansion of this deadly fossil fuel industry and exacerbating a crisis that the Pentagon has called a “threat multiplier” that could exacerbate terrorism.[2]

Our communities are assaulted every day with ever-increasing volumes of explosive oil and gas cargo close to our homes, our schools and our places of worship; with coal dust clouding our air as mile-long trains cut through our towns; with unaccountable corporations pushing oil and gas pipelines across our land; and with toxic emissions increasing rates of asthma among our children and threatening our elderly when this fossil fuel is burned. The fossil fuel export terminals and pipelines often traverse geologically active areas and earthquake subduction zones, exposing nearby communities to the risk of calamitous explosions and toxic spills should a major quake take place. At the point of extraction, and at every step of the way to our port cities, too often Native American and First Nations treaty rights are being violated in order to facilitate the extraction, transport, storage and export of this dangerous cargo. Too often, it is the poorest that bear the brunt of this pollution. Our water is threatened by regular spills of oil and tar sands, and by toxic mercury emitted when these fossil fuels are burned. Our fish are dying in rivers overheated by rising temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels. And our forests, once a place of refuge for wildlife in the heat, are increasingly going up in flames or succumbing to pests due to increasing temperatures. The oceans are becoming too acidic to support critical links in the food chain. 

This destruction is as unnecessary as it is unconscionable. Solutions are available now. There are no insurmountable economic or technological obstacles to a clean energy transition. Our cities are demonstrating the promise of this transition every day, building healthier communities, better buildings, and more efficient and affordable transportation systems while lowering emissions. We are taking our money and power back and investing them in our communities. We can do this. But there’s a reason that we are not doing it fast enough now, a reason that we continue to make the problem worse even as we prove the promise of solutions: the entrenched power of the fossil fuel industry, and their unconscionable campaign of deception that protects that power.

We now know that the fossil fuel industry has been covering up the devastating truth about climate change for almost four decades. Recent reports[3] reveal that Exxon knew as early as the 1970s that climate change would threaten all of us, yet chose to confuse and mislead the public, putting its profits ahead of the planet. The delays caused by these actions by the fossil fuel industry leave us with no time to lose. We must act immediately and decisively. Implementing solutions will take time, but we must stop investing in the problem right away.

New fossil fuel infrastructure locks us into a deadly climate future, making the problem not just worse but insoluble. The transition from present emission levels to safe levels will take decades, but it begins with a simple and firm commitment today: we must stop making it worse with large new capital investments that increase emissions. We don’t have time or money to waste going backwards.[4]

In order to begin to act on climate change, we support and align your jurisdiction’s policy to these two vital commitments: 

1) We must stop building new fossil fuel infrastructure in order to leave at least 80% of proven fossil fuel reserves in the ground;

2) We must invest in a “just transition”[5] to a clean economy – a transition that delivers shared prosperity, good, family-supporting jobs, and support for people and communities who bear the brunt of climate impacts and economic dislocation.

It is imperative that the West Coast of the United States does our share to meet these two commitments.

Signed,

your name!      Sign on here

NATURAL GAS: Enormous Northwest refineries would feed China exclusively

China would build the world's largest methanol refinery at this site in the Port of Tacoma, where an aluminum smelter once stood. Photo courtesy of Northwest Innovation Works.

Northwest Innovation Works guesses its Tacoma plant would use roughly 10,000 gallons [of water] per minute, and perhaps more.

 

NATURAL GAS:  Enormous Northwest refineries would feed China exclusively

David Ferris, E&E reporter   EnergyWire: Tuesday, November 17, 2015

SEATTLE -- China is seeking to tap the flood of cheap natural gas coming from the interior of North America by converting it to methanol at three huge refineries in Washington and Oregon.

The processing plants, collectively called Northwest Innovation Works, have received little attention despite their head-snapping impact:

• The refineries could increase demand for natural gas in the Pacific Northwest by 40 percent.

• They would more than triple the size of the fast-growing U.S. methanol industry.

• With an estimated $7 billion price tag, the refineries would be one of the largest investments ever by China in new U.S. manufacturing.

• The largest plant, planned for Tacoma, could use more water than all the residential customers of the city's public utility district combined.

"This is really a cross-Pacific collaboration," said Simon Zhang, the project's CEO and a former official with BP who is based in Shanghai. "It's very unique in that it brings a benefit to both sides of the Pacific very clearly."

However, the plan is being viewed warily by Pacific Northwest environmental groups, which have proved effective at slowing a long list of proposals to deliver coal, oil and natural gas from the continent's midsection to hungry markets in Asia.

"They fit into the pattern of more fossil-fuel infrastructure built on the Columbia that we have concerns about," said Brett VandenHeuvel, the executive director of Columbia Riverkeeper. Two of the three refineries would sit on the banks of the Columbia River.

The Chinese proposal, first made public last year, is different from other projects that would export raw fossil fuels. First, the end goal is methanol, a crucial building block of plastic and many other materials of modern life. Second, China would be the sole recipient.

Third is that it aims to lower greenhouse gas emissions in China, while raising them to a lesser degree on American shores. China is the world's largest producer and consumer of methanol, and it manufactures almost all of it from coal, which creates a great deal of carbon emissions.

Reducing carbon emissions across industries is an increasingly urgent goal for China, which will be a key player at the Paris climate talks at the end of this month. In September, China announced it would establish a carbon-trading market by 2017.

The Pacific Northwest venture claims that using natural gas instead would reduce emissions by 70 percent, and that it will employ a new technique that reduces the carbon footprint even further.
Northwest Innovation Works says the three refineries would create 3,000 construction jobs and 460 permanent jobs. It could spawn new customers for natural gas in the Pacific Northwest, where industrial jobs have been on the wane. The proposal has received an enthusiastic endorsement from Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D).

The factories would also use enormous quantities of water, an obvious selling point for China and a potential flashpoint in the Pacific Northwest. China has chronic water shortages, while Washington and Oregon have lots of it -- though that supply is in question as climate change reduces the region's snowpack.

Two of the refineries would sit on opposite banks of the Columbia River, one in Clatskanie, Ore., about an hour's drive northwest of Portland, and the other at the Port of Kalama in Washington state. Both would produce about 5,000 metric tons of methanol a day, which would put them on par with the world's largest methanol plants.

But both would be dwarfed by a third proposed refinery at Tacoma, a busy industrial port a half-hour south of Seattle. Double the size of the other two, it would be the largest methanol refinery ever built.

 

Cheap gas fires up U.S. methanol

The new refineries would bring an even steeper growth curve to an already fast-growing methanol industry in the United States.

Methanol, also known as methyl alcohol or wood alcohol, is a precursor to hundreds of products, from plastics to fabrics to paints to windshield wiper fluid. The Washington and Oregon projects, like other plants, would combine natural gas with steam and heat to make a synthesis gas of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and hydrogen. That gas is heated and compressed and run over a catalyst to make a crude methanol, and then it is distilled with water.

The resulting methanol -- colorless, flammable, and a liquid at atmospheric temperature -- would be shipped to China, where it would be converted into olefins, such as ethylene and propylene, and used to make a range of products.....   read more here

Portland Passes Groundbreaking Fossil Fuel Ban!

Passed: The City Council voted 5-0 on the Fossil Fuel Policy!

Portland City Council voted 4-0 passing the Oil Train Resolution last week and Thursday evening the Fossil Fuel Policy was passed by a 5-0 vote!! Thank you to everyone who came to the hearing, sent emails and made phone calls!     Video above

This Northwest City Just Passed The Strongest Resolution Against Fossil Fuels In The Country

by Natasha Geiling Nov 13, 2015      Climate Progress 

 

CREDIT: Rick Rappaport

In a landmark victory for climate activists, the Portland, Oregon city council voted yesterday to pass a resolution that opposes any new infrastructure that would transport or store fossil fuels within the city or its adjacent waterways. 

The vote, which was unanimous, comes a week after the city council voted to adopt a similar policy opposing any proposed rail projects that would carry crude oil through the city of Portland or Vancouver. Together, the resolutions constitute what environmentalists are calling the strongest city-supported opposition to fossil fuels in the country.

“We seem to be reaching some sort of tipping point where people are waking up and realizing the enormity of the issue,” Adriana Voss-Andreae, director of 350PDX, told ThinkProgress. “That we got a unanimous vote was jaw-dropping. It was an inspiring moment for all of us.”

While Portland cannot, due to interstate commerce laws, unilaterally ban fossil fuels from being shipped via rail, road, or water, it can enact local laws that limit the transportation and storage of fossil fuels within the city itself, especially if those laws are based in environmental or safety concerns. That’s largely the goal of this resolution — to codify into law things like zoning restrictions or restrictions on materials that would make shipping and transporting fossil fuels through Portland either prohibitively expensive, or too time consuming, for fossil fuel companies.

“Our work is not done yet, but we feel that with this unanimous vote, there is good chance that the codifying language is going to be strong and signal to the fossil fuel industry that Portland is not open for their business,” Voss-Andreae said.

Protesters before the hearing on oil trains last week.

CREDIT: Rick Rappaport

Located at the mouth of the Columbia River Gorge, Portland is an important port city for the transport of fossil fuels overseas and has been the site of standoffs between environmentalists and fossil fuel companies for years. In 2014, the Canadian energy company Pembina proposed constructing a propane export terminal in the Port of Portland, which would have received, stored, and shipped some 1.6 million gallons of propane a day. The terminal, which would have cost an estimated $500 million, would have been the single largest private investment project in Portland’s history. At first, Portland Mayor Charlie Hales appeared to support the project, but faced with a groundswell of local opposition, Hales came out in opposition of the project in May of this year.

To the activists that rallied against the project, the stakes were higher than a single export terminal — it was a stand against a future where increasing fossil fuel infrastructure was the political and economic status quo.

“Here you have this pipeline project that, six months ago, was seen as just a simple economic development project, shipping one more thing through the Port of Portland,” Carl Abbott, an urban studies and planning professor at Portland State University, told the Globe and Mail in May of this year. “Now it has gotten caught up in the fear of energy transportation and the cause of global warming and taking a stand against more fossil fuels.”

Earlier this summer, Portland again found itself at the center of the debate about fossil fuels, as a Royal Dutch Shell ship attempted to make its way through Portland and up to the Arctic to aid in Shell’s exploratory drilling efforts. The ship was initially stopped by 13 climbers who hung from Portland’s St. John’s Bridge for 38 hours, impeding the ship’s ability to pass. Eventually, the ship was able to pass through the climbers and leave Portland, but news of the protest spread through social media and national outlets, increasing the visibility of the movement, according to the protesters.

Around the same time as the Shell protest, Hales traveled to the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis. Then, in September, Portland voted to divest from fossil fuels.

“That whole movement, from Pembina to Shell to divestment, really set the stage for this,” Voss-Andreae said. “This is a very exciting moment for our movement.”

Oil Industry Turns to Pacific NW Oil Train Terminals in Wake of KXL Rejection

Oil Industry Turns to Pacific Northwest Oil Train Terminals in Wake of Keystone Rejection

New report shows controversial facilities would boost oil extraction and climate-warming pollution.

Last week, President Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline, a strong stand for climate protection. Yet a new report shows that the oil industry will now turn to massive oil-by-rail terminals proposed in the Pacific Northwest as a second-best alternative to Keystone. In fact, in the absence of new pipelines serving the Canadian oil sands fields, the fiercely debated Northwest rail terminals would be the sole driver of new extraction there.

That’s according to a new Sightline-commissioned analysis by independent research group Oil Change International (OCI). Taken together, the proposed Northwest oil-by-rail terminals would be the climate pollution equivalent of adding more than 28 million cars to the road.

 

Tracking Emissions

The climate impact of the proposed crude-by-rail terminals in the Pacific Northwest.

The Pacific Northwest states of Oregon and Washington are facing a quadrupling of their crude-by-rail terminal capacity to over a million barrels a day. Sightline Institute commissioned this report from Oil Change International (OCI) to examine the impact that expansion would have on climate change.

In Tracking Emissions: The Climate Impacts of the Proposed Crude-by-Rail Terminals in the Pacific Northwest, OCI deploys the oil industry’s own forecasting and modeling tools together with a detailed examination of the Northwest facilities’ configurations. Key findings in the report concern:

• Propping up Canadian tar sands: In the absence of new pipelines, Northwest rail terminals would be the sole driver of new growth in Canadian tar sands oil.
• Multiplying oil extraction and climate pollution: Oil train facilities in the Northwest could unlock as much as 382,000 barrels per day of new tar sands production that would otherwise not be extracted. The resulting greenhouse gas pollution from extra tar sands production could be as much as 106 million metric tons per year of carbon dioxide—the equivalent of doubling the total greenhouse gas pollution of Washington state.
• Feeding the Bakken beast: Northwest oil train terminals could also lead to more oil drilling in the Bakken formation, as much as 114,000 barrels per day beyond what would be produced without the terminals. The resulting greenhouse gas pollution from this extra production could be as much as 30 million tons per year of carbon dioxide—the equivalent of doubling the number of cars on the road in Oregon and Washington.

Download: Tracking Emissions, Sightline Institute, Nov 2015

 Contact:          Eric de Place, eric@sightline.org, 206-447-1880 x105