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Keystone plankton ‘go slow’ as ocean acidity rises Updated for 2026

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As the planet’s oceans become more acidic, the diatoms – a major group of alga – in the Southern Ocean could grow more slowly.

Nobody expected this. And since tiny, single-celled algae are a primary food source for an entire ocean ecosystem, the discovery seems ominous.

Bioscientist Clara Hoppe and colleagues from the Alfred Wegener Institute at the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, report in the journal New Phytologist that they tested the growth of the Antarctic diatom Chaetoceros debilis under laboratory conditions.

They used two levels of pH – which is an indicator of acidity – and they exposed their tiny volunteers to constant light and to changing light, providing both standard laboratory conditions and lighting levels that approximated to the real world.

Under variable light in high-CO2 world, plant growth slows

In the unblinking glare of light, the diatoms responded well. Their growth levels were consistent with an assumption that more dissolved carbon dioxide – which makes the waters more acidic – would in effect fertilise plant growth.

Under conditions of changing light, however, it was a different story. The algae grew more slowly, which suggests that the oceans could become less efficient at removing carbon from the atmosphere, and perhaps less valuable as a primary food source for the creatures that teem in the Antarctic waters.

“Diatoms fulfil an important role in the Earth’s climate system”, Dr Hoppe says. “They can absorb large quantities of carbon dioxide, which they bind before ultimately transporting part of it to the depths of the ocean. Once there, the greenhouse gas remains naturally sequestered for centuries.”

Previous research into the steady acidification of the oceans has tended to concentrate on the consequences for coral reefs, fisheries, and tourism, but not on the impact on plant life in the seas.

Since carbon dioxide acts as a fertiliser, higher levels dissolved in the water might stimulate more growth. But growth depends not just on more carbon dioxide, but also on reliable sunlight. In the stormy southern seas, this is not steadily supplied.

Dr Hoppe says: “Several times a day, winds and currents transport diatoms in the Southern Ocean from the uppermost water layer to the layers below, and then back to the surface – which means that, in the course of a day, the diatoms experience alternating phases with more and with less light.”

Her co-author, marine biogeochemist Björn Rost, from the Alfred Wegener Institute, says: “Our findings show for the first time that our old assumptions most likely fall short of the mark. We now know that when the light intensity constantly changes, the effect of ocean acidification reverses.

“All of a sudden, lower pH values don’t increase growth, like studies using constant light show. Instead, they have the opposite effect.”

The implication is that, at certain intensities, the photosynthesis chain breaks down. The point at which light becomes too much light is more quickly reached in waters that are more acidic.

Like all such research, the finding has limitations. It applies to one species of single-celled creature in the waters of one ocean, and the tests were in a laboratory on a small scale, and not in a turbulent ocean rich in life. The Alfred Wegener team will continue their studies.

Fisheries at risk

But in the real world, coastal communities in 15 US states could be at long-term economic risk, as ocean acidification starts to take its toll on the commercial oyster fisheries.

Julia Ekstrom, then of the Natural Resources Defense Council and now director of the Climate Adaptation Programme at the University of California, Davis, and George Waldbusser, assistant professor of ocean ecology and biogeochemistry at Oregon State University report with colleagues, in Nature Climate Change, on an unholy mix in the oceans.

They say that a combination of rising greenhouse gas levels, more acid waters, polluted rivers, and upwelling currents put at risk mollusc fisheries from the Pacific Northwest, New England, the Mid-Atlantic states and the Gulf of Mexico – affecting the shellfish industry that is worth at least $1bn to the US.

Oyster larvae are sensitive to changes in ocean water, and more likely to die as pH levels shift towards the acidic. But acidification is not the only source of stress, as nitrogen-rich nutrients and chemical pollutants cascade from the land into the rivers, and wash through estuaries and fish hatcheries on the coast.

Things can be done. Scientists have been looking at ways in which the industry might be able to adapt to change. But how well the oyster stock can adapt in the long term remains problematic.

“Ocean acidification has already cost the oyster industry in the Pacific Northwest nearly $110 million and has jeopardised about 3,200 jobs”, Dr Ekstrom says.

And Dr Waldbusser adds: “Without curbing carbon emissions, we will eventually run out of tools to address the short term, and we will be stuck with a much longer-term problem.”

 

 

Tim Radford writes for Climate News Network.

 

 




390832

Keystone plankton ‘go slow’ as ocean acidity rises Updated for 2026

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As the planet’s oceans become more acidic, the diatoms – a major group of alga – in the Southern Ocean could grow more slowly.

Nobody expected this. And since tiny, single-celled algae are a primary food source for an entire ocean ecosystem, the discovery seems ominous.

Bioscientist Clara Hoppe and colleagues from the Alfred Wegener Institute at the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, report in the journal New Phytologist that they tested the growth of the Antarctic diatom Chaetoceros debilis under laboratory conditions.

They used two levels of pH – which is an indicator of acidity – and they exposed their tiny volunteers to constant light and to changing light, providing both standard laboratory conditions and lighting levels that approximated to the real world.

Under variable light in high-CO2 world, plant growth slows

In the unblinking glare of light, the diatoms responded well. Their growth levels were consistent with an assumption that more dissolved carbon dioxide – which makes the waters more acidic – would in effect fertilise plant growth.

Under conditions of changing light, however, it was a different story. The algae grew more slowly, which suggests that the oceans could become less efficient at removing carbon from the atmosphere, and perhaps less valuable as a primary food source for the creatures that teem in the Antarctic waters.

“Diatoms fulfil an important role in the Earth’s climate system”, Dr Hoppe says. “They can absorb large quantities of carbon dioxide, which they bind before ultimately transporting part of it to the depths of the ocean. Once there, the greenhouse gas remains naturally sequestered for centuries.”

Previous research into the steady acidification of the oceans has tended to concentrate on the consequences for coral reefs, fisheries, and tourism, but not on the impact on plant life in the seas.

Since carbon dioxide acts as a fertiliser, higher levels dissolved in the water might stimulate more growth. But growth depends not just on more carbon dioxide, but also on reliable sunlight. In the stormy southern seas, this is not steadily supplied.

Dr Hoppe says: “Several times a day, winds and currents transport diatoms in the Southern Ocean from the uppermost water layer to the layers below, and then back to the surface – which means that, in the course of a day, the diatoms experience alternating phases with more and with less light.”

Her co-author, marine biogeochemist Björn Rost, from the Alfred Wegener Institute, says: “Our findings show for the first time that our old assumptions most likely fall short of the mark. We now know that when the light intensity constantly changes, the effect of ocean acidification reverses.

“All of a sudden, lower pH values don’t increase growth, like studies using constant light show. Instead, they have the opposite effect.”

The implication is that, at certain intensities, the photosynthesis chain breaks down. The point at which light becomes too much light is more quickly reached in waters that are more acidic.

Like all such research, the finding has limitations. It applies to one species of single-celled creature in the waters of one ocean, and the tests were in a laboratory on a small scale, and not in a turbulent ocean rich in life. The Alfred Wegener team will continue their studies.

Fisheries at risk

But in the real world, coastal communities in 15 US states could be at long-term economic risk, as ocean acidification starts to take its toll on the commercial oyster fisheries.

Julia Ekstrom, then of the Natural Resources Defense Council and now director of the Climate Adaptation Programme at the University of California, Davis, and George Waldbusser, assistant professor of ocean ecology and biogeochemistry at Oregon State University report with colleagues, in Nature Climate Change, on an unholy mix in the oceans.

They say that a combination of rising greenhouse gas levels, more acid waters, polluted rivers, and upwelling currents put at risk mollusc fisheries from the Pacific Northwest, New England, the Mid-Atlantic states and the Gulf of Mexico – affecting the shellfish industry that is worth at least $1bn to the US.

Oyster larvae are sensitive to changes in ocean water, and more likely to die as pH levels shift towards the acidic. But acidification is not the only source of stress, as nitrogen-rich nutrients and chemical pollutants cascade from the land into the rivers, and wash through estuaries and fish hatcheries on the coast.

Things can be done. Scientists have been looking at ways in which the industry might be able to adapt to change. But how well the oyster stock can adapt in the long term remains problematic.

“Ocean acidification has already cost the oyster industry in the Pacific Northwest nearly $110 million and has jeopardised about 3,200 jobs”, Dr Ekstrom says.

And Dr Waldbusser adds: “Without curbing carbon emissions, we will eventually run out of tools to address the short term, and we will be stuck with a much longer-term problem.”

 

 

Tim Radford writes for Climate News Network.

 

 




390832

Keystone plankton ‘go slow’ as ocean acidity rises Updated for 2026

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As the planet’s oceans become more acidic, the diatoms – a major group of alga – in the Southern Ocean could grow more slowly.

Nobody expected this. And since tiny, single-celled algae are a primary food source for an entire ocean ecosystem, the discovery seems ominous.

Bioscientist Clara Hoppe and colleagues from the Alfred Wegener Institute at the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, report in the journal New Phytologist that they tested the growth of the Antarctic diatom Chaetoceros debilis under laboratory conditions.

They used two levels of pH – which is an indicator of acidity – and they exposed their tiny volunteers to constant light and to changing light, providing both standard laboratory conditions and lighting levels that approximated to the real world.

Under variable light in high-CO2 world, plant growth slows

In the unblinking glare of light, the diatoms responded well. Their growth levels were consistent with an assumption that more dissolved carbon dioxide – which makes the waters more acidic – would in effect fertilise plant growth.

Under conditions of changing light, however, it was a different story. The algae grew more slowly, which suggests that the oceans could become less efficient at removing carbon from the atmosphere, and perhaps less valuable as a primary food source for the creatures that teem in the Antarctic waters.

“Diatoms fulfil an important role in the Earth’s climate system”, Dr Hoppe says. “They can absorb large quantities of carbon dioxide, which they bind before ultimately transporting part of it to the depths of the ocean. Once there, the greenhouse gas remains naturally sequestered for centuries.”

Previous research into the steady acidification of the oceans has tended to concentrate on the consequences for coral reefs, fisheries, and tourism, but not on the impact on plant life in the seas.

Since carbon dioxide acts as a fertiliser, higher levels dissolved in the water might stimulate more growth. But growth depends not just on more carbon dioxide, but also on reliable sunlight. In the stormy southern seas, this is not steadily supplied.

Dr Hoppe says: “Several times a day, winds and currents transport diatoms in the Southern Ocean from the uppermost water layer to the layers below, and then back to the surface – which means that, in the course of a day, the diatoms experience alternating phases with more and with less light.”

Her co-author, marine biogeochemist Björn Rost, from the Alfred Wegener Institute, says: “Our findings show for the first time that our old assumptions most likely fall short of the mark. We now know that when the light intensity constantly changes, the effect of ocean acidification reverses.

“All of a sudden, lower pH values don’t increase growth, like studies using constant light show. Instead, they have the opposite effect.”

The implication is that, at certain intensities, the photosynthesis chain breaks down. The point at which light becomes too much light is more quickly reached in waters that are more acidic.

Like all such research, the finding has limitations. It applies to one species of single-celled creature in the waters of one ocean, and the tests were in a laboratory on a small scale, and not in a turbulent ocean rich in life. The Alfred Wegener team will continue their studies.

Fisheries at risk

But in the real world, coastal communities in 15 US states could be at long-term economic risk, as ocean acidification starts to take its toll on the commercial oyster fisheries.

Julia Ekstrom, then of the Natural Resources Defense Council and now director of the Climate Adaptation Programme at the University of California, Davis, and George Waldbusser, assistant professor of ocean ecology and biogeochemistry at Oregon State University report with colleagues, in Nature Climate Change, on an unholy mix in the oceans.

They say that a combination of rising greenhouse gas levels, more acid waters, polluted rivers, and upwelling currents put at risk mollusc fisheries from the Pacific Northwest, New England, the Mid-Atlantic states and the Gulf of Mexico – affecting the shellfish industry that is worth at least $1bn to the US.

Oyster larvae are sensitive to changes in ocean water, and more likely to die as pH levels shift towards the acidic. But acidification is not the only source of stress, as nitrogen-rich nutrients and chemical pollutants cascade from the land into the rivers, and wash through estuaries and fish hatcheries on the coast.

Things can be done. Scientists have been looking at ways in which the industry might be able to adapt to change. But how well the oyster stock can adapt in the long term remains problematic.

“Ocean acidification has already cost the oyster industry in the Pacific Northwest nearly $110 million and has jeopardised about 3,200 jobs”, Dr Ekstrom says.

And Dr Waldbusser adds: “Without curbing carbon emissions, we will eventually run out of tools to address the short term, and we will be stuck with a much longer-term problem.”

 

 

Tim Radford writes for Climate News Network.

 

 




390832

Keystone plankton ‘go slow’ as ocean acidity rises Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




As the planet’s oceans become more acidic, the diatoms – a major group of alga – in the Southern Ocean could grow more slowly.

Nobody expected this. And since tiny, single-celled algae are a primary food source for an entire ocean ecosystem, the discovery seems ominous.

Bioscientist Clara Hoppe and colleagues from the Alfred Wegener Institute at the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, report in the journal New Phytologist that they tested the growth of the Antarctic diatom Chaetoceros debilis under laboratory conditions.

They used two levels of pH – which is an indicator of acidity – and they exposed their tiny volunteers to constant light and to changing light, providing both standard laboratory conditions and lighting levels that approximated to the real world.

Under variable light in high-CO2 world, plant growth slows

In the unblinking glare of light, the diatoms responded well. Their growth levels were consistent with an assumption that more dissolved carbon dioxide – which makes the waters more acidic – would in effect fertilise plant growth.

Under conditions of changing light, however, it was a different story. The algae grew more slowly, which suggests that the oceans could become less efficient at removing carbon from the atmosphere, and perhaps less valuable as a primary food source for the creatures that teem in the Antarctic waters.

“Diatoms fulfil an important role in the Earth’s climate system”, Dr Hoppe says. “They can absorb large quantities of carbon dioxide, which they bind before ultimately transporting part of it to the depths of the ocean. Once there, the greenhouse gas remains naturally sequestered for centuries.”

Previous research into the steady acidification of the oceans has tended to concentrate on the consequences for coral reefs, fisheries, and tourism, but not on the impact on plant life in the seas.

Since carbon dioxide acts as a fertiliser, higher levels dissolved in the water might stimulate more growth. But growth depends not just on more carbon dioxide, but also on reliable sunlight. In the stormy southern seas, this is not steadily supplied.

Dr Hoppe says: “Several times a day, winds and currents transport diatoms in the Southern Ocean from the uppermost water layer to the layers below, and then back to the surface – which means that, in the course of a day, the diatoms experience alternating phases with more and with less light.”

Her co-author, marine biogeochemist Björn Rost, from the Alfred Wegener Institute, says: “Our findings show for the first time that our old assumptions most likely fall short of the mark. We now know that when the light intensity constantly changes, the effect of ocean acidification reverses.

“All of a sudden, lower pH values don’t increase growth, like studies using constant light show. Instead, they have the opposite effect.”

The implication is that, at certain intensities, the photosynthesis chain breaks down. The point at which light becomes too much light is more quickly reached in waters that are more acidic.

Like all such research, the finding has limitations. It applies to one species of single-celled creature in the waters of one ocean, and the tests were in a laboratory on a small scale, and not in a turbulent ocean rich in life. The Alfred Wegener team will continue their studies.

Fisheries at risk

But in the real world, coastal communities in 15 US states could be at long-term economic risk, as ocean acidification starts to take its toll on the commercial oyster fisheries.

Julia Ekstrom, then of the Natural Resources Defense Council and now director of the Climate Adaptation Programme at the University of California, Davis, and George Waldbusser, assistant professor of ocean ecology and biogeochemistry at Oregon State University report with colleagues, in Nature Climate Change, on an unholy mix in the oceans.

They say that a combination of rising greenhouse gas levels, more acid waters, polluted rivers, and upwelling currents put at risk mollusc fisheries from the Pacific Northwest, New England, the Mid-Atlantic states and the Gulf of Mexico – affecting the shellfish industry that is worth at least $1bn to the US.

Oyster larvae are sensitive to changes in ocean water, and more likely to die as pH levels shift towards the acidic. But acidification is not the only source of stress, as nitrogen-rich nutrients and chemical pollutants cascade from the land into the rivers, and wash through estuaries and fish hatcheries on the coast.

Things can be done. Scientists have been looking at ways in which the industry might be able to adapt to change. But how well the oyster stock can adapt in the long term remains problematic.

“Ocean acidification has already cost the oyster industry in the Pacific Northwest nearly $110 million and has jeopardised about 3,200 jobs”, Dr Ekstrom says.

And Dr Waldbusser adds: “Without curbing carbon emissions, we will eventually run out of tools to address the short term, and we will be stuck with a much longer-term problem.”

 

 

Tim Radford writes for Climate News Network.

 

 




390832

Keystone XL – we won! But the real battle lies ahead Updated for 2026

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So the Keystone XL bill failed to pass Congress. The Big Fail marks a huge success for groups who have been struggling to expose the KXL for the dirty policy it represents.

The actions taken on the day of the vote, including disrupting the Senate vote in the chamber and blocking Senators Bennet (D-Col.) and Carper (D-Del.) from leaving their offices, speak to the dedication and tirelessness of the movement to stop the pipeline.

So we can all go home now, right? We won!

The problem is that the bill will be back in January, and the congress we’re dealing with right now is very different from the one we’ll see ushered into office at the beginning of 2015.

Just because the lame-duck Congress voted against the bill (barely) with its Democratic Party majority does not mean that the Republicans will have any problem sweeping it through when they take the majority.

The Democratic Party’s vote does give Obama a mandate to veto the bill next year if and when it goes through, but the question remains as to whether or not he will use it.

In short, the Big Fail and ensuing celebrations from the Environmental NGOs looks suspiciously like a setup. It’s definitely not time to demobilize.

‘Claim no easy victories’

Rising Tide North America released a statement on their Facebook page going so far as to call the bill’s failure a “hollow victory”. While the Big Fail is vital, activists must stay vigilant, they stress.

“We’ve made the climate argument on this pipeline and won. We’ve made the environmental impact argument and won. We’ve even made the jobs argument on Keystone XL and won”, the group insists.

“The grassroots climate and environmental movements are obviously mobilized. Hopefully, next January becomes more about fighting Keystone XL in the streets, along the pipeline route and corporate offices than asking a political system rigged against us to smile upon our cause once more.”

As RTNA intimates, the KXL must be met through sincere and dedicated efforts at Indigenous solidarity with the Rosebud Sioux, who have called the KXL’s passage through the House an “act of war”, and others who are resisting not only the pipeline, but the tar sands as well.

This is not just a struggle to stop one pipeline; it is a struggle for the future of the Earth, and that means that the tar sands – the Earth’s largest and most toxic industrial project – must be shut down, and all pipelines extending from it thwarted.

What if the bill fails in January, through some miracle, and Canada exports the oil through Canada’s Atlantic coast? Would the NGOs declare victory, or would they stand with us in the streets?

As Amilcar Cabral wrote, “Claim no easy victories.”

Pipelines are not the end

The day of the vote, the New York Times gave the world a striking image of what pipelines and the future of what is called North America look like with a map of major oil spills from pipelines over just the last 20 years.

The grey silhouette of the US is splashed with dark circles along the Midwest and Gulf Coast. Of course these grey splashes look ominous, but do they give us an actual picture of the horror?

If we extend our view to catch a glimpse of Canada, contemplation on the horrors of the energy industry becomes totally unfathomable. The continued exploitation of tar sands in Alberta, Canada, is driving not only the worsening of climate change, but also the further destruction of the landbase.

No matter how many carbon credits are given out and swapped, no matter what techno-fixes are developed, when the land and water systems are destroyed, biodiversity is exterminated, and the web of life breaks down.

Yes, targeting the KXL pipeline is both functional and symbolic, and it has merit. But no, today’s decision in Washington does not signal the beginning of a new era-only an increment in the initial, legislative phase.

The Washington Post ran an article four days ago throwing into question whether or not this federal vote even matters, since the states maintain some degree of autonomy, and industry may find routes around politics.

In a telling incident, a Vice President of a major energy company got into a scuffle with the editor of EnviroNews on Monday while trying to take the latter’s camera, snorting out lines like, “I do whatever I want” and “fuck you!” This is the mentality not just of a person, but of a pampered industry used to getting its way.

While popular action has brought the pipeline to a screeching halt, the climate movement is far from packing up its gear and heading to Disneyland.

There is likely a long struggle ahead, and we need to prepare ourselves for what that’s going to look like-including the struggle not only against KXL, but also the numerous fossil fuel infrastructure routes moving out to the Pacific through the Cascadia bioregion, as well as the new gas infrastructure at Cove Point.

Mobilizing against climate change

At this point, the Peoples Climate March and its 300,000 participants appears to be a good start towards the kind of mass mobilization that we need. Earth Day of 1970 saw some 20 million people in the streets.

What if those are the paradigm-shifting numbers we need to see if we are going to take the future into our own hands and lead ourselves away from a more catastrophic failure than the Earth could ever manage?

Such movements are happening all over the world. Burkina Faso, Hong Kong, Guerrero – these are just a few places where populations are rising up, because capitalism will never be able to accomplish the goals that are necessary to secure the overcoming of exploitation and genocide.

Real victory would mean transforming the basis of society from fossil fuels and corporations to local, horizontal networks of community empowerment, recognizing treaty rights of Indigenous peoples, ending environmental racism.

This means abandoning the big money approach of the Gang Green – Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund, and yes, even the ‘dynamic duo’ of Avaaz and 350.org.

It means building power on community level and spreading resources to those in dire need.

Cynical clickbait activism breeds cynical participation, while accumulating resources for dubious means generally focused around brand marketing and advertising makes the movement into its own worst enemy: a self-destructive and superficial PR complex mired in a corporate governance model.

Real victory will never come from Washington, it will come from Washington’s ultimate disarmament and disempowerment through the self-activity of people rising up together.

 

 

Alexander Reid Ross is a contributing moderator of the Earth First! Newswire, where this article was first published. He is the editor of Grabbing Back: Essays Against the Global Land Grab (AK Press 2014) and a contributor to Life During Wartime (AK Press 2013).

 




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Keystone XL – who needs it? We got a railroad! Updated for 2026

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“Rail can get you just about anywhere. It’s like the Harry Potter stairway. You get on the stairs at one end and they move to wherever you need to go.

“That’s the beauty of the railway. You get on at one end here, with your bitumen or dilbit, and then you can end up in different places depending on what are the best markets.”

That quote is from Pete Sametz, president of Connacher Oil and Gas, speaking to the Daily Oil Bulletin about the appeal of moving tar sands oil by rail. And Sametz isn’t alone in his enthusiasm for rail transportation options for bitumen. 

At the Canadian Institute’s North American Pipeline Symposium in June, Randy Meyer of Canadian National railway, told the conference how this situation appeared to him.

“It’s kind of amusing when I read in the paper that there’s this angst and gnashing of teeth about Keystone and I’m going, ‘My goodness, we’re already there.’ We can go there and we are. We are shipping product there.”

Rail vs pipeline – a 16% price advantage

Aside from the magical Harry Potter flexibility of rail compared to pipelines, rail also offers the option of moving bitumen without having to dilute it, as is required for pipelines, which makes it cheaper as explained by Randy Meyer.

“We did a study where we took the American Association of Railway’s published rates, which averaged out all the traffic that moves and all its products. That average … is about 16 per cent less than pipeline costs.”

The reality is that tar sands bitumen transport is so well-suited for rail over pipelines that it is now cheaper to move tar sands bitumen by rail than it is by pipeline.

If you’re a tar sands industry executive, this is your light-bulb moment: Who needs the Keystone XL headache when you can bypass the controversy entirely using existing rail lines?

Heating bitumen for railcars costs less than diluting it for pipelines

This reality and the recent revelations that the impact of the tar sands oil will be much greater than initially predicted, present a grim picture for the environment, although apparently an amusing and exciting one for oil and rail executives. Companies like Grizzly Oil Sands outline their plans on their website.

“Grizzly is excited at the range of benefits to be generated from its oil-by-rail bitumen marketing strategy. The Company believes its approach can achieve economics superior to using the Keystone XL pipeline, if built.”

On their site Grizzly mentions purchasing new rail cars to move bitumen as well as completing a rail-to-barge facility on the Mississippi in Louisiana.

And despite predictions in the new proposed oil-by-rail regulations that the DOT-111 cars that will eventually not be allowed to carry the much more volatile Bakken crude oil would instead be repurposed to carry tar sands oil, this is unlikely. The most profitable way to move bitumen by rail is in thermally-jacketed cars that allow for the oil to be heated.

The current DOT-111 cars don’t have this capacity and retrofitting them would be too costly. Heating the bitumen versus diluting it is where the industry sees the cost advantages. 

Tar sands oil ‘exempt’ from new testing requirements

And while the new proposed regulations for moving volatile crude oil and ethanol mention that tar sands oil may be transported in DOT-111s in the future, the proposed changes do not apply to tar sands oil in any way.

When the DOT first announced new testing requirements for crude oil being shipped by rail in February of this year, there was immediate push back from the industry because of the impact it may have on moving tar sands by rail.

The government quickly clarified that tar sands oil would be exempt from the requirements, a move that at the time was described by the president of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers as a “judicious response”.

The cost advantages and flexibility of moving heated bitumen by rail and are spurring significant new investment in the oil-by-rail industry.

As reported by Oil Change International in their report Runaway Train, the planned expansion is massive and would increase the currently oil-by-rail capacity of one million barrels of oil per day to five times that amount. While much of this is also for lighter crudes like Bakken, it also is being driven by the desire to move tar sands oil by rail.

Trains give access to export oil terminals

As previously noted on DeSmogBlog, the additional reason that rail is appealing to tar sands producers is that they ultimately want to sell their product overseas. And while there is an export ban on oil produced in the US, this does not apply to the tar sands oil from Canada.

And the trains currently give access to the East, West and Gulf coasts where the oil can be loaded onto ocean going vessels and sent to the highest bidder on the world market.

Global Partners is currently one of the top capacity oil-by-rail companies with a terminal on the East coast in Albany, NY, on the West coast in Oregon and with plans to build a new facility in Texas and another in New Windsor, NY. And despite their current business of moving Bakken crude, they are actively promoting tar sands by rail to the industry.

Global Partners CEO Eric Slifka recently made the sales pitch for tars sands by rail at an industry conference saying, “we can take pure heavy crude oil, put it in a heated rail car … and move it directly.”

Global’s recent expansion plans in Texas resulted in the following headline in the Houston Business Journal: “Keystone? Who needs it? Railroad plans fuel terminal for Port Arthur”.

If the current economics of moving tar sands oil by rail can be proven to be scalable, and it would appear they can, rail appears to be faster, cheaper and more flexible as an option to get Canadian tar sands oil onto the international market.

Which means the producers can get higher prices, which in turn makes the expanded extraction and consumption of the tar sands that much more likely.

 

 

Justin Mikulka is a freelance writer, audio and video producer living in Albany, NY. Justin lends his Internet expertise to the group Gas Free Seneca which is working to prevent large LPG storage facilities in the Finger Lakes region of NY. He has a degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Cornell University.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JustinMikulka

This article was originally published on DeSmogBlog.

 

 




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