Shipping by rail is not an economic alternative and would likely constrict the amount of bitumen eventually mined. Shipments from Canada to the Gulf Coast by rail have not exceeded 30,000 barrels per day in any of the past 12 months according to the US Energy Information Administration. Seventy-five percent of Canadian heavy crude is processed in the Midwest. Keystone XL is expected to carry 830,000 barrels a day south to the Gulf. Canadian oil and gas producers are counting on this huge increase in capacity facilitated by the pipeline. Its industry association forecasted a doubling of bitumen production rates to 3.1 billion barrels/day by 2020 and 5.0 billion bpd by 2030. The fact is Keystone XL, or something like it, is essential to the full economic exploitation of the dirty energy in the Alberta tar sands. The Canadian producers are pursuing other routes in an effort to reach international markets. However these routes, notably the trans-Rockies route to British Columbia, are also running into stiff environmental opposition. But thanks to our corporate owned national government, Canadian oil men view the international route south to be more feasible.
The supplemental EIS admits, because it would be incredible to do otherwise, the pipeline "would contribute to cumulative global greenhouse gas emissions". That is an understatement of ecologically disastrous proportions. Not only is bitumen the dirtiest liquid fuel on the planet because it contains high amounts of sulphur, heavy metals, and other environmentally toxic waste products, (not called "heavy crude" for nothing) refining it requires huge inputs of energy and produces petcoke as a byproduct. Petcoke, when not being dumped onto air-polluting tips is burned in places like China where it fouls the air with even more heat-trapping gases. The pipeline will emit 181 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every year or as much as 51 coal fired generating plants.
Of course, lost in all the happy talk of no significant impacts from the State Department are the permanent, long-term adverse effects the pipeline would have on wildlife and other natural assets such as dark night skies and no anthropogenic noise. In a letter to State the Interior Department expressed concern that the statement fails to adequately assess the project's impact on the Niobrara River, Verdigre Creek, and Missouri River, segments of which are managed by the National Park Service as wild and scenic. The existing Keystone Oil pipeline has had fourteen leaks disclosed in the draft EIS to the date of Interior's letter. The letter goes on to mention the many species including migratory birds and their habitat that would be severely impacted should a spill occur. But as far as the State Department is concerned building the Keystone XL is a foregone conclusion.