Completion of the Keystone XL pipeline will not be an environmental disaster. America is already crisscrossed by hundreds of pipelines, thousands of oil-tanker trains, and tens of thousands of tanker trucks. The trains and trucks have a lower capacity and a higher accident rate. Four oil trains have crashed over the last year and in the worst of these accidents forty-seven lives were lost. Pipelines, while not accident-free, are much the safest way of moving oil long distances. Once buried, they are unobtrusive, silent, and efficient.
Keystone opponents understand that the issue is largely symbolic. No one believes that the economy will be less dependent on fossil fuels if it is not built, or that its absence will reduce the greenhouse effect. No one believes that the exploitation of the Alberta oil sands will cease. There are strong arguments in favor of importing oil from Canada rather than from sources in the politically volatile Middle East.
The Keystone controversy replays many of the arguments, pro- and con-, that were made about an Alaska pipeline in the early 1970s. Environmentalism was a political newcomer in those days, strongly supported from all points along the political spectrum. President Nixon declared environmental protection a national priority; he presided over passage of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 and creation of the EPA. But when oil was discovered on the Alaskan North Slope, adjacent to the Arctic Ocean, his administration favored its exploitation.
How could the crude oil be moved from the wells to refineries in the lower 48 states? Supertankers could not sail safely in Arctic waters, which were frozen solid for part of every year and always beset by icebergs. To build a railroad or a highway across hundreds of miles of mountains and tundra would have been slow and phenomenally costly. A pipeline to the ice-free southern shores of Alaska was the logical solution.
The Yom Kippur War of 1973 played the same role then as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine plays today. It acted as a reminder that foreign fuel sources are not always dependable. American support for Israel led to retaliation by the OPEC Arab states, which first placed an embargo on oil exports to the United States, and then more than doubled the price. This situation increased American political support for the Alaska pipeline.
To some Americans, however, it would be an act of desecration, marring the nation’s one remaining pristine wilderness. Native American organizations protested against the threat to their traditional way of life. Naturalists worried that the line would impede caribou migration routes. A consortium of environmental organizations collaborated on a lawsuit to block it. Nevertheless it was completed.
Oil flowed for the first time in 1977, down its 800-mile length from the Arctic to its southern terminal, Port Valdez. It is still flowing today. Most of the line runs above ground, across territory whose population is less than one per square mile. In the caribou migration areas it is buried, surrounded by an insulated jacket chilled by liquid nitrogen, to keep it so cold that the surrounding permafrost will not melt. For 37 years now it has operated smoothly, resisting damage from forest fires and earthquakes, and suffering only small leaks (one of them caused by a drunk who shot at it point-blank with a high-powered rifle).
The great environmental tragedy associated with Alaska oil happened not with the pipeline itself but after a shipment of the oil was transferred to the tanker Exxon Valdez in 1989. It ran aground on the Bligh Island Reef in Prince William Sound. Its hull ripped open and more than ten million gallons of crude oil leaked into the ocean. Ironically a longer pipeline, which some analysts had suggested from the outset, leading direct from Alaska to the lower forty-eight states, would have forestalled such a disaster.
The history of the Alaska pipeline holds out several useful lessons for today. One is that objectors can be mollified by political concessions. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 provided financial compensation to native peoples whose lands were affected, and settled many old land-tenure controversies. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, meanwhile, created or extended nineteen national parks, wildlife refuges, wilderness areas, and national preserves, totaling more than one hundred million acres of land (which is to say, greater than the total land area of most individual states in the lower forty-eight). This immense act of conservation sweetened the pill for environmentalists who had feared widespread landscape degradation.
The second lesson is that government regulation of major engineering projects is necessary, and that we can learn from our mistakes. Maintenance regulations on the Alaska pipeline have been tightened continually over the decades since it opened, to assure rapid spill response, precautionary shut-downs, and regular overhauls
Our historical experience shows that careful regulation can stimulate an environmental improvements and economic growth. If President Obama does authorize completion of Keystone XL, it will be more thoroughly surrounded by regulatory safeguards than earlier pipelines and less likely to cause environmental damage. While the search for cleaner and fully renewable energy sources continues, it is sensible to carry on using the safest technologies we already possess.
