Forget keystone pipeline: Ex-oil man T-Bone Pickens has a better plan
On Thursday, Republicans in the U.S. Congress, who have spent weeks trying to get approval for the Keystone XL pipeline in exchange for payroll tax cut extensions, were still determined to block any progress, while Americans continue to struggle and yet another government shutdown inched closer.
On the same day,
ex-oil man T-Bone Pickens took to the air waves on CNN to promote his plan of moving the country toward more energy self-reliance and job creation, by investing in wind, solar and natural gas.
Supportersof the TransCanada pipeline, including Koch Industries, tout the claim of 20,000 new jobs and the pursuit of less dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Opposition of the pipeline, which initially was planned to cross six states from Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast, say it would pose a risk to vital aquifers, particularly in Nebraska, where 30% of U.S. irrigation water originates and that more jobs would be created by moving the country forward to renewable energy sources.
“More than 500,000 Americans have submitted comments opposing this tar sands pipeline,” said Jeremy Symons, Senior Vice President of the National Wildlife Federation. “Never before has there been this level of public opposition to a single energy project.”
President Obama initially supported an agreement with Canada for the pipeline, but on November 11, he put a delay on the project, in favor of more environmental studies and routing reviews, requested by conservationists and state governors.
Tar sand is composed of clay, dirt, oil and sand. It is very thick and requires extensive processing using known compounds classified as carcinogenic
by the EPA to make it thin enough to flow through a pipeline.
“The dangers of the pipeline are compelling and no one should believe the claims of, either the Republican leadership or the energy companies, with respect to the project being shovel ready or with respect to the number of jobs it’s going to produce,” said Roger Toussaint, International Vice President of the Transport Workers Union.
One concern among many, with environmentalists, is that tar sand has to be mined, not extracted, and four tons of sand and soil are removed to produce one barrel of marketable oil. The process has been compared to mountain-top coal mining, where entire ecosystems are dredged and destroyed to access the product.
The pipeline, carrying an extremely corrosive oil product would cut through six states, including Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Government data showed that spill damage in 2010 alone was almost a billion dollars.
T-Bone Pickens has a
plan to move the United States to natural energy self-reliance, using the fact that U.S. natural gas is the cheapest in the world and he sees it as a bridge-product on the road to oil independence, while alternate energy sources are being developed. The project is called pickensplan.com.
According the Pickens website:
Any discussion of alternatives should begin with the 2007 Department of Energy study showing that building out our wind capacity in the Great Plains - from northern Texas to the Canadian border - would produce 138,000 new jobs in the first year, and more than 3.4 million new jobs over a ten-year period, while also producing as much as 20 percent of our needed electricity.
Building out solar energy in the Southwest from western Texas to California would add to the boom of new jobs and provide more of our growing electrical needs - doing so through economically viable, clean, renewable sources.“Oil prices are set by OPEC and the global demand” said Pickens in a Thursday CNN interview. “We won’t be seeing the price of gasoline for our cars go much lower. But for our electricity and home heat, we have plenty of resources right here--wind, solar and natural gas that is cheaper than in any other country—so, we could replace more than one-third of our foreign oil imports in the next ten years and power our own economy--but it will depend on leadership.”
It would require leadership in government and the private sector to guide America away from past draconian plans of drilling in Alaska’s pristine nature preserve and crossing environmentally sensitive parts of the country with a another tar-filled pipeline.
More information on
T-Bone Pickens’s plan.
Forget keystone pipeline: Ex-oil man T-Bone Pickens has a better plan - National environmental policy | Examiner.com