Pipeline, rail projects could bring tar sands oil to Bay Area

Planned oil pipelines and rail projects tied to Canada’s tar sands could lead to a boom in tanker traffic along both the West and East coasts and heighten the risk of spills, according to a report released Wednesday by an environmental group.

The report, from the Natural Resources Defense Council, argues that if four new oil transport projects move forward, the number of tankers and barges carrying crude from the oil sands in U.S. waters could jump twelvefold by 2021.

Many of those ships would head to California, the authors argue, because the state’s oil refineries were designed to handle heavier grades of crude.

[...] shipments, they say, pose a particular danger, because the most common product shipped from the oil sands — dilbit, short for diluted bitumen — quickly sinks in water, making cleanup difficult.

The report comes days after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced it would seek an alternate route for the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota, which had drawn fierce opposition from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and fossil fuel opponents.

Pipeline projects, most notably the Keystone XL pipeline extension, have become flashpoints in the fight over climate change, pitting environmentalists against the oil industry and construction unions.

[...] some pipeline projects that could affect the United States lie entirely in Canadian territory, designed to connect the land-locked oil sands to the global market.

Extracting hydrocarbons from the sands requires more energy and releases more greenhouse gases than most oil drilling.

Supporters of the Trans Mountain project in particular see it as a way to connect the oil sands to growing markets in Asia after years of being dependent on exports to the United States.