Killing The Keystone XL -- For The Archives -- August 11, 2021

This is how much diesel fuel it takes to transport Canadian oil by train (CBR) now that the Keystone XL has been killed:

For the archives and for the granddaughters:

• 1 unit train has 100 cars, 2 engines and weighs 27,240,000 lbs
  
• 1 unit train carries 3,000,000 gallons of oil  
• 1 train uses 55.5 gallons of diesel per mile 
• it takes 119,000 gallons of diesel to go 2,150 miles from Hardisty, AB (Canada) to Freeport, TX 
• the Keystone XL pipeline was to deliver 34,860,000 gallons of oil per day
• it would take 12 trains and 1,428,000 gallons of diesel to deliver that amount. PER DAY!
• 521,220,000 gallons of diesel per year 
• the oil will still go to market with or without the pipeline 
• by stopping the pipeline billions of gallons of diesel will be wasted and cause needless pollution 

Alternative?

• stop the Tar Sands all together? Then we must ship the oil from the overseas sandbox. 
• 1 large oil tanker can haul 120,000,000 gallons of oil 
• 1 boat takes 15 days to float across the Atlantic 
• 1 boat uses 63,000 gallons of fuel PER DAY, that is about 1 million gallons of the most polluting type fuel in the world PER TRIP 
• *(See below) Or take 3.5 days of Keystone Pipeline to move the same amount of oil with a fraction of the pollution 
• *In international waters ship emissions remains one of the least regulated parts of our global transportation system. The fuel used in ships is waste oil, basically what is left over after the crude oil refining process. It is the same as asphalt and is so thick that when cold it can be walked upon. It's the cheapest and most polluting fuel available and the world's 90,000 ships chew through an astonishing 7.29 million barrels of it each day, or more than 84% of all exported oil production from Saudi Arabia 
• shipping is by far the biggest transport polluter in the world. There are 760 million cars in the world today emitting approx. 78,599 tons of Sulphur Oxides (SOx) annually 
• the world's 90,000 vessels burn approximately 370 million tons of fuel per year emitting 20 million tons of sulphur oxides. That equates to 260 times more sulphur oxides being emitted by ships than the world's entire car fleet 
• one large ship alone can generate approx. 5,200 tons of Sulphur oxide pollution in a year, meaning that 15 of the largest ships now emit as much SOx as the worlds 760 million cars 
• eliminate all gas consuming cars and diesel vehicles? 
• worldwide car gas consumption is 403,583,712,000 gallons a year. That's billions 
• worldwide oil consumption is 1,500,000,000,000 gallons a year. That's trillions
• it takes 2.15 gallons of oil to make 1 gallon of car gas and .6 gal of diesel 
• so it takes 867,704,980,800 gallons of oil to run the worlds cars, most diesel vehicles for a year and some ships 
• that leaves 632,295,019,200 gallons of oil for other uses 
• passenger vehicles are only a very small percentage of the problem. If emissions are the problem why not just capture them at the exhaust? 
• create an industry to clean exhaust instead of crushing an entire industry and building a complete untested, replacement industry? 

Alternative, mining:

• are we willing to dramatically increase mining to get all the minerals necessary to make all these batteries and electric motors? 
• mining is way worse for the environment than oil extraction.