With so much controversy and partisan spin over the Keystone XL Pipeline, we knew that people just wanted a nonpartisan information source for this issue. Our resource gives people both sides of the Keystone XL Pipeline debate so they can become better informed and make up their own minds.

keystone xl pipelineProCon.org expanded its pro and con research about the proposedKeystone XL Pipeline. The pipeline, if completed, would transport oil extracted from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, through several US states, and ultimately to the Texas Gulf region.

The updated ProCon.org resource presents statements from authoritative sources in the debate over “Should the United States authorize the Keystone XL Pipeline to import tar sand oil from Canada?”

All statements are fully sourced and include a biography of the person or organization being quoted.

In addition to the expert statements, the updated ProCon.org resource contains:

* Keystone XL Pipeline Environmental Review by US State Department - featuring the final environmental impact statement released on January 31, 2014.

* President Obama’s Statements on Keystone XL Pipeline - featuring President Obama’s veto threat of the Keystone XL Pipeline Act on January 6, 2015.

* Keystone XL Pipeline Act (S.1) - including the text of the bill and the latest actions in Congress.

New Keystone XL Pipeline Pros and Cons

Source: procon.org

What are tar sands and or oil sands?

The US Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and Argonne National Laboratory, stated the following on their 2012 Oil Shale & Tar Sands Programmatic EIS website, on the page titled “About Tar Sands,” available at ostseis.anl.gov (accessed Apr. 10, 2013):

“Tar sands (also referred to as oil sands) are a combination of clay, sand, water, and bitumen, a heavy black viscous oil. Tar sands can be mined and processed to extract the oil-rich bitumen, which is then refined into oil. The bitumen in tar sands cannot be pumped from the ground in its natural state; instead tar sand deposits are mined, usually using strip mining or open pit techniques, or the oil is extracted by underground heating with additional upgrading…

Tar sands are mined and processed to generate oil similar to oil pumped from conventional oil wells, but extracting oil from tar sands is more complex than conventional oil recovery. Oil sands recovery processes include extraction and separation systems to separate the bitumen from the clay, sand, and water that make up the tar sands. Bitumen also requires additional upgrading before it can be refined. Because it is so viscous (thick), it also requires dilution with lighter hydrocarbons to make it transportable by pipelines…

Much of the world’s oil (more than 2 trillion barrels) is in the form of tar sands, although it is not all recoverable. While tar sands are found in many places worldwide, the largest deposits in the world are found in Canada (Alberta) and Venezuela, and much of the rest is found in various countries in the Middle East. In the United States, tar sands resources are primarily concentrated in Eastern Utah, mostly on public lands. The in-place tar sands oil resources in Utah are estimated at 12 to 19 billion barrels.”