There are reports that the federal government is thinking about allowing the export of American oil again. The U.S. used to be a large oil exporter, decades ago, but that stopped in 1973 as crude production on domestic soil reached a peak and an Arab oil embargo threatened our economy. But then came fracking, which has been a game changer for producing oil and natural gas, from Pennsylvania to...
There’s been a lot of talk recently on environmental websites and in the news media about which is a riskier way to transport oil and natural gas to market: Through pipelines or in rail tanker cars. Of course, that’s something of a trick question because the real answer is: Neither. On the pipeline front, there are many reasons to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry tar...
There’s a crisis going on right now in this country with oil transportation. It’s happening because of the oil-fracking boom in North Dakota, mainly, and also to some extent because of the exploitation of the Canadian tar sands. Fossil fuel production has boomed — but in a region with no pipeline to transport the oil to refineries or for shipment abroad. Since the region is...
I’m not going to write a long post on this because it was just two days ago that pointed out some of the reasons why the massive Keystone XL pipeline — which would take heavy tar sands oil from Canada and ship it across environmentally sensitive American prairie on its way to the Gulf Coast and then to foreign markets — is such a bad idea. The exploitation of the tar sands oil...
Philadelphia — the densely populated 5th-largest city in America — dodged a bullet this week…but just barely: IT COULD HAVE been worse – a lot worse. None of the seven CSX cars – six of them loaded with volatile crude oil – that derailed on the 128-year-old rail bridge over the Schuylkill between University City and Grays Ferry about 12:30 a.m. yesterday fell...
