Unlike Keystone XL, rival pipeline that traverses U.S. heartland avoids similar scrutiny

A major rival to the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline project is vastly boosting its U.S. pipeline system, and avoiding the scrutiny that federal regulators, environmentalists and landowners are giving Keystone owner TransCanada Corp. Rather than building a single new pipeline, Enbridge Inc., also based in Canada, is replacing smaller, existing pipelines with bigger pipes, adding pumping capacity and installing new supply lines alongside existing ones. They are proceeding largely unencumbered, report Matt Pearce and Neela Banjeree of the Los Angeles Times, with plans to spend $8.8 billion to transport greater volumes of petroleum to the Gulf Coast. (LAT map)

"The company already has permits from the initial construction years ago and . . . the physical work will take place in the United States," so it doesn't need new permits, the reporters write. "The task of determining the safety or wisdom of Enbridge pipeline routes falls on a patchwork of local, county and state jurisdictions through the Midwest and East, most of which lack intensive pipeline expertise."

Enbridge's recent spills raise questions about its safety record. The company was recently fined $3.7 million for a Marshall, Mich., spill that dumped 20,082 barrels of oil in the Kalamazoo River in 2010, the biggest penalty ever from the nation's pipeline authority, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation. (Read more)

Poll: Rural Nebraskans support Keystone pipeline, but want it away from Sandhills, Ogallala Aquifer

Most rural Nebraskans are in favor of building the Keystone XL pipeline, but want it to avoid the ecologically sensitive Sandhills region and the Ogallala Aquifer, according to the latest Nebraska Rural Poll.

Of the more than 2,000 people polled, 65 percent said the pipeline should be built away from the Sandhills and the aquifer, Art Hovey of the Lincoln Journal Star reports. About 61 percent said the environmental risks of building it would not outweigh the economic benefits. Keystone XL builder TransCanada, initially proposed a route that would cross the Sandhills and the aquifer, but after much push-back, changed the route to avoid most of both areas. The proposal is still being reviewed by the U.S. State Department and the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality. (Los Angeles Times map)

Though the poll only surveys Nebraska residents, the impact of the Keystone pipeline, if built, would reach rural residents from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico. The survey was conducted by the Center for Applied Rural Innovation at the University of Nebraska. (Read more)

Two seemingly like-minded Nebraskans square off over threat of Keystone XL to water supply

A dispute has erupted in Nebraska between two previous allies -- environmentally outspoken and traditional Democratic activist Jane Kleeb and water expert and all-around green guy James Goecke. The public fight is over Keystone XL, the already much disputed 1,700-mile steel pipeline that would carry heavy, low-quality crude from Canada’s oil sands to refineries in Texas. At issue, writes Washington Post reporter Steven Mufson, is whether the pipeline would pose a threat to the massive Ogallala Aquifer, one of the world’s largest underground sources of fresh water which sits firmly under Nebraska and likely holds enough water to cover the country’s 48 contiguous states two feet deep.

TransCanada, the pipeline's owner, plans to bury the pipeline at least four feet underground, and in many places could be putting it in the aquifer. Kleeb says that if the pipeline should spring a leak where it touches the aquifer or even above it, oil could quickly seep into and through the porous, sandy soil, contaminating the aquifer. Goecke disputes that. A hydrogeologist and professor emeritus at the University of Nebraska, Goecke has been measuring water tables in Nebraska’s ecologically sensitive Sand Hills region since 1970. He says opposition to the pipeline is driven by misunderstanding of how the aquifer works. “I’ve spent my career drilling holes to and through the Ogallala Formation. I’ve probably seen as much of the Ogallala as anybody,” he says in a TV commercial for TransCanada. “There’s a misconception that if the aquifer is contaminated, the entire water supply of Nebraska is going to be endangered, and that’s absolutely false. If people recognize the science of the situation, I think that should allay a lot of the fears.” (Read more)

Natural gas industry's rapid growth putting strain on states' efforts to properly inspect wells

Advocates whose job it is to watch the natural-gas industry have been impressed by Ohio's example: The state has hired as many as 70 new field inspectors to keep track of the work being done by drillers of 250 more wells this year in their state alone. But, reports Jim Malewitz of Stateline, the news agency of the Pew Center on the States, there is concern that other states are falling way behind in their mandated inspections of the gas wells that have appeared on their landscapes. (Photo by Amy Sancetti)

Gwen Lachelt of Washington, D.C.-based Earthworks, which advocates more oversight of the gas industry, "notes that in other states with surging natural gas production, there has been no effort to beef up oversight of the oil and gas industry. 'No one is minding the store,' Lachelt says. 'The states are simply not enforcing what regulations they do have on the books…They don’t have enough inspectors, and wells are going uninspected."

Because of a lack of manpower, most wells across the U.S. are not inspected in a given year.  Malewitz notes that, for example, New Mexico has roughly the same number of oil and gas wells as Ohio, but it employs only 12 inspectors to oversee them. That small crew made between 25,000 and 30,000 inspections last year. In Colorado, home to 47,651 wells, a team of 15 performed 12,000 inspections in 2011, according to the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.  (Read more)