Essay: Pipeline roulette

The Yellowstone River near Greycliff, Montana. The longest undammed river in the Lower 48 was sullied by an oil spill in July that sent 50,000 gallons of crude downstream. A canoeist who has paddled the river's length twice wonders how many more pipelines must be built and break before a less harmful energy source is found. Photo courtesy wormwould/flickr.

Sept. 15, 2011

As the Obama Administration leans toward approving a pipeline carrying tar sands oil from Canada to Texas, a Montanan picks up his paddle and canoes a cherished river sullied by our unquenched demand for fossil fuels.

By Alan S. Kesselheim

for The Daily Climate

BOZEMAN, Mont. – What riveted my attention, lately, was not the looming juggernaut of the Keystone XL pipeline chugging sludge from Alberta to Texas, that pipeline that has been getting all the press, and getting protesters arrested in Washington, D.C. What got my attention was the news, in July, of the Silvertip Pipeline break underneath the Yellowstone River, near Laurel, Mont.: Some 50,000 gallons of crude - by industry estimates - poured into the river from a break in the 12-inch, 20-year-old pipeline feeding the Exxon-Mobil refinery in Laurel. 

The news hit me like a sucker punch.

I have twice paddled a canoe more than 550 miles down the Yellowstone River, from the Yellowstone National Park boundary to the Missouri River confluence in North Dakota. I have spent hundreds of days riding the currents of that river and many nights camped on its gravel bars and islands. Over that kind of time, you develop a relationship with a river. The news of thousands of gallons of oil gushing into that flow, polluting its waters and shores, impacting its wild residents, washing downstream on the flooding currents, was personal.

There was the by-now familiar round of accusations, claims, and blame. Most figures were supplied by the industry, and then questioned by state officials and environmental agencies. For example, at first Exxon-Mobil claimed that the leak only lasted for six minutes. Later they admitted that it went on for an hour. We all know the public relations denial drill.

'Hammered, used, and soiled'

Ten days after the spill I took a canoe out for 15 miles, spent the day looking at the bathtub ring of oil deposits in the vegetation, the oily stains and pools in logjams. The river was still high, turbid with sediment, powerful. We paddled past the vista of refineries in Billings, talked to a landowner who found oil-coated wildlife on his property despite the cleanup officials' claim that there was little or no effect on wildlife. The Yellowstone felt muscular and timeless. It also felt beleaguered and sullied. That is its nature, to be an icon, the longest undammed river left in the Lower 48, and, at the same time, a flow hammered, used, and soiled by its passage through the gauntlet of our occupation.

That spill on a cherished river riveted my attention, too, because - like the tar sands pipeline debate - it illuminates the larger context of the infrastructure we depend on to fuel our energy addiction, and just how frail and unknown the specifics of that network are. In the aftermath of the spill, people were asking a great many questions about oil and gas pipelines. How many, where, how deep? Questions you would think there would be solid, quantifiable answers to. 

Instead, the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration estimated there were in the neighborhood of 35,000 pipeline crossings of rivers, streams and lakes in a system of pipes spidering across 2.5 million miles of landscape. They also admitted that the precise location of these water crossings, and even the exact route of the pipelines, was only roughly known. Minor water crossings, however those might be defined, aren't included in the figures. Nor are many of the specifics of pipeline size, depth of burial, age and inspection history on record. 

Thousands of crossings

The Silvertip Pipeline under the Yellowstone River was buried only four to five feet deep. There had been reports of pipeline corrosion, but no follow up. Maintenance and inspection were the responsibility of Exxon-Mobil. In that same 20 years, the Yellowstone River has experienced three 100-year flood events. The scouring of a few feet of streambed, and the exposing of that pipeline, was a when - not if - proposition by a river that size.

Silvertip is one pipeline crossing one river. There are tens of thousands of similar crossings in this country alone, each with its unique set of environmental and structural conditions; each with its problematic features - permafrost, earthquake faults, unstable sediments, floods, ice jams. They are lying there, fueling our addiction, fraught with the potential for error. Expand that view to all the other aspects of the petroleum network we rely on - the deepwater rigs, the tankers, the trucks, the fracking frenzy, the municipal and residential delivery networks. Overlay those systems with their unique and real potential for mishap, the lack of regulation, the frenetic pace of development, the insatiable demand for more. You see where this takes you. How many when-not-if situations exist out there? How many Yellowstone River spills lurk around the corner, how many less dramatic accidents happen routinely and go unreported or undiscovered?

Which brings us to decisions like the one looming for the Keystone XL project. This $7 billion pipeline, built to carry 700,000 barrels of tar sands sludge every day across a continental span extending 1,700 miles from the Far North of Alberta to the Gulf Coast of Texas, crossing dozens of major bodies of water and hundreds of minor waterways along the way. All of it administered loosely, built and maintained by a company with a spotty environmental record, and yet dependent on voluntary industry compliance; all to tap an environmentally appalling source of fuel, and to continue hell-bent on the same old path towards the cliff of unsustainability.

Anyone else up for a Plan B?

© Alan S. Kesselheim. All rights reserved.

Photos: A pair of sandhill cranes take flight in fog where Trout Creek flows into the Yellowstone River in Yellowstone National Park; courtesy Ruffin Prevost/Yellowstone Gate. Oil-absorbent pads litter the Yellowstone River shoreline in the wake of a 50,000-gallon spill near Billings, Mont; courtesy NWFblogs/flickr. Kesselheim family and friend on the bank of the Yellowstone River; courtesy Al Kesselheim.

Alan S. Kesselheim is a freelance writer and teacher who lives with his family in Bozeman, Mont. 

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