Situation Report

epw.senate.gov

Senator Barbara Boxer
Keystone Pipeline and the Threat to Human Health
February 26, 2014
(As prepared for delivery)

We are here today to share dramatic new information that will shine a spotlight on the health impacts of tar sands oil - health impacts that are already being felt in communities exposed to one of the filthiest kinds of oil on our planet.

The Keystone XL pipeline will allow 830,000 barrels of tar sands oil every day to flow through our nation - an initial increase of 45 percent compared to what is being imported today - and this project could just be the beginning. In the long term, it is projected that Canada would produce almost 300 percent more tar sands oil by 2030.

Leonard Patterson took a picture of a parcel of land on Detroit’s northwest side earlier this month as part of an emerging database. Credit Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times

nytimes.com - by Monica Davey - February 17, 2014

DETROIT — A midnight blue Chevy rolls slowly down a snow-covered street, an emergency strobe light on its roof and a sign on its side that promises this is “official business.” At each house, business, even vacant lot, workers in the car pause to decide whether someone lives there and what shape the place is in before snapping a photo and beaming it to “mission control” miles away.

All over Detroit, scores of these workers — on some days as many as 75 three-person teams — have been wending their way through the streets since December, cataloging on computer tablets one of this bankrupt city’s most devastating ailments: its tens of thousands of abandoned and dilapidated buildings.

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Natural gas is flared at a Pioneer Natural Resources well, in Karnes County, Texas in 2010. 
Photographer: Eddie Seal/Bloomberg

bloomberg.com - by Lisa Song, Jim Morris and David Hasemyer - February 20, 2014

. . . For the past eight months, the Center for Public Integrity, InsideClimate News and The Weather Channel have examined what Texas, the nation's biggest oil producer, has done to protect people in the Eagle Ford from the industry's pollutants. What's happening in the Eagle Ford is important not only for Texas, but also for Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Dakota and other states where horizontal drilling and high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, have made it profitable to extract oil and gas from deeply buried shale.

Our investigation and records obtained from Texas regulatory agencies reveal a system that does more to protect the industry than the public. . .

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