PIPELINES FROM CANADA NOT NEW

With the Obama administration’s opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, one might think that the project is something new under the sun. Another might believe oil and natural gas pipelines are novel. Someone else might claim these buried lines are dangerous and injurious to the environment.

Just as with railroads, highways, airways, waterways, pipelines over the years have experienced accidents. Yet, statistics supplied by their regulatory agency, the U.S. Department of Transportation, show pipelines are safest.

But, the reason for this espousal of Keystone and pipelines in general stems from an accidental discovery. A Time magazine piece about the pipeline industry dated November 20, 1964, showed in a centerfold map the major lines then crisscrossing the United States, plus entries from Canada. Labeled, “Invisible Network, A Million Miles of Pipeline,” the spread also included a box that noted 710,000 miles of natural gas pipelines, a 148,000 mile-system for crude oil and another 57,000 miles for delivery of various products.

Time’s article celebrated the system and its growth.

Department of Transportation statistics for 2011, the latest that could be found readily, showed about the same for oil, 149,571 miles, but double for gas at 1,557,606 miles.

“Pipelines Are Safest for Transportation of Oil and Gas,” was the title of an exhaustive article published by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research in June 2012. The publication was filled with statistical tables from the Department of Transportation. [Available at manhattan-institute.org/html/17.htm]

For some 75 years pipelines have carried crude from Canada to the United States.

Time, which backed the map with two full-page color photos of pipeline laying in its then familiar small-type, three-column, small-column black and white photos, wrote of the economic value of the lines. It spoke of the competition between railroads and the pipeline companies. It reported that some rail companies were laying pipelines along their right of ways. It told of 1,600,000 tons of improved pipe being bought from steel companies in 1964.

Oh yes, Lyndon B. Johnson was president.