The Perils of Pauline

When looking at XL, one cannot reasonably expect said project's technological capabilities will mirror the  Perils of Pauline flicks where the heroine continually faces horrifying situations, like the one seen below, that are always successfully resolved just in the nick of time, something simply not possible whenever an "oil" spill, consisting of the corrosive and polluting tar sands dibit  occurs, as seen not only on the map above but also in Mayflower, AK, when 210,000 gallons of Canadian crude made its presence known to the town on March 29, 2013.

Thompson hasn’t been fishing much. Ever since Exxon Mobil’s Pegasus pipeline burst in March and spilled an estimated 210,000 gallons of Canadian heavy crude oil two miles from his house, he’s had headaches of preternatural intensity, so bad they wake him up in the middle of the night. He has nosebleeds, and hemorrhoids even though he’s only 36; there’s a rash on his neck that has only gotten worse in the eight months since the spill; and some days he feels so weak that he can hardly get out of bed. He estimates that he has lost almost 35 pounds since the rupture, falling from a fit 220 down to 185. When he went to see a doctor in April, he was told he has a mysterious spot on one lung—but he hasn’t been able to afford to go back.

GLENDIVE, Montana — When an oil pipeline burst in July 2011 and poured 63,000 gallons of crude into the Yellowstone River 200 miles upstream from Dena Hoff’s farm of wheat, beans and corn on the Great Plains in Glendive, she felt disgusted.

When it happened again Saturday, she felt terror. This pipeline breach was underneath the Yellowstone River, just a few feet from her sheep pasture. The new spill poured out some 50,000 gallons of crude oil. Leaders of this small riverside farming and ranching community in northeastern Montana warned residents not to drink their tap water, because benzene, a carcinogen, was found in the municipal water system. Oil slicked the river for dozens of miles, almost to the border with North Dakota. Hoff’s property smelled sickeningly like diesel.

If XL is built, check out how much toxic sludge will be going over the largest aquifer in North America.

About 40 percent of the total project has been built so far, in two segments: a 298-mile stretch from Steele City, Neb., to Cushing, Okla., and a 485-mile segment between Cushing and Nederland, Texas. Oil is flowing through these pipelines from the increased production currently happening in the middle of the U.S.

The remaining segment, if approved, would run between Alberta and Steele City. If fully completed, the Keystone XL pipeline would be able to move up to 830,000 barrels a day of crude from Canada's oil sands south to the U.S. Gulf Coast. There, refineries would process it into gasoline and other fuels.

Sounds like a rather dubious plan given that:

1. The XL needs a price point of $65/barrel to make it profitable 
2. Monies made from the sale & transport of the sludge to China & significant others, go to the oil companies and not to the US as the oil companies desperately need the money to continue to frack and drill for natural gas and shale oil as both enterprises, like the tar sands, need the $65/barrel price point to stay in business and...
3. The tar sands dibit is, as stated before, the dirties fossil fuel on the planet.