Keystone Pipeline spills estimated 3,500 barrels of crude oil

Surprising no one. This pipeline should never have been approved in the first place.

To help visualize that amount, an Olympic size swimming pool would fit ~12,000 barrels of oil.

Especially since this is its third oil spill.

It looks like this happens every three years. Maybe they should sell advance tickets for 2028.

That'll just cause the oil to be transported over rail instead, which is more expensive and has an even higher chance of spills.

So about 1/3 of a swimming pool or 5 rail cars worth Not so bad really and safer than rail cars. 150,000 barrels a day gets sent by rail car. Pipelines are certainly the better option. I’d say catching this one and shutting it down was a success story. Too bad Biden killed keystone XL

To visualize further, 60 barrels could contaminate one square mile of aquifer in ND, and 3500 barrels can contaminate 60 square miles.

60 square miles of devastated aquifer. Estimates for initial cleaning and restoring would be $1 billion USD. That’s just the emergency response.

The costs of 30 years of pumping and treating and disposing groundwater minimum are not known. 100+ years of groundwater monitoring. The land will never be able to be restored to its initial condition.

Are we tired of winning so much yet?

>60 square miles of devastated aquifer. Estimates for initial cleaning and restoring would be $1 billion USD. That’s just the emergency response.

source?

Moreover, all of those concerns exist with rail transport. It's not like they magically don't spill, or even spill less.

EPA’s guidance used to state that one gallon of petroleum can contaminate up to one million gallons of water. Unfortunately, sourcing specific federal data or risk assessments reflecting this magnitude has become difficult, as crucial information underpinning these kinds of impact and cost projections appears to have been purged from public EPA websites over the last few months. I guess you’ll just have to deal with this when you hide information.

Transporting it by rail and train is even riskier.

>EPA’s guidance used to state that one gallon of petroleum can contaminate up to one million gallons of water.

That doesn't answer my question. How did you get the "$1 billion USD" figure? It's unclear how you go from "one gallon of petroleum can contaminate up to one million gallons of water" to "Estimates for initial cleaning and restoring would be $1 billion USD".

Moreover, if that's "up to" amount, then surely it only applies to the worst case, like if you dumped the oil directly into a river/ocean? The picture in the article shows there's no source of water nearby. That's not to say that it can't affect groundwater or whatever, but blindly applying "one gallon of petroleum can contaminate up to one million gallons of water" makes no sense.

> EPA’s guidance used to state that one gallon of petroleum can contaminate up to one million gallons of water.

This is a worst case scenario. It basically assumes all of the oil goes directly into a water supply - so at that point you're just calculating the dilution of benzene.

While there's certainly some cleanup for the crew to do (the article says it's already 20% done) this is still a relatively small spill and probably pales in comparison to the contamination already created by gas stations in the region.

Are we sure it was an accident, or was it practice dumping in preparation for oil going negative again from the second round of Trumponomics?

Well either way, at least in several months we won't have to worry from hearing about it.

Help me visualize a square mile - in km if possible!

A little over 5km squared

About 1,6 km by 1,6 km. So 16 100 m run tracks or football pitches long sides. Albeit those can be 90 to 120 m for UK or 100 to 110 m for international...

Please correct me if I misread, but I thought the article said 20% of the oil was recovered, not that cleanup and restoration was 20% complete. Full restoration is rarely possible, and cleanup can take decades as there is a very long tail of activities.

What would you posit are the median case and the best case scenarios?