Gurgle Gurgle: TransCanada Opens Keystone Pipeline

Keep your duct tape handy: TransCanada's Keystone pipeline, which may contain defective steel, is now fully operational. Outgoing CEO Hal Kvisle opened the taps in Wood River, Illinois, this week, sending 435,000 barrels of tar sands oil coursing beneath the South Dakota prairie every day. Incoming CEO Russ Girling says don't worry, be happy:

“This project is entirely logical. … We're moving the world’s largest and most secure source of crude oil to a nation that needs that crude oil, and what we’re backing out is crude oil from places like Venezuela.... Is there risk in this? There always is. But I think the facts would dictate that those environmental concerns are unfounded. That they’re not based on truth” [Russ Girling, quoted by Nathan Vanderklippe, "TransCanada's Keystone Opens U.S. Taps," CTV.ca, 2010.07.01].

Sure, Russ. There's no truth to Syncrude's conviction last month for killing three times as many ducks with its tar sands tailings ponds as it originally admitted. There's no truth to John Podesta's assessment that the tar sands you're shipping are "polluting, destructive, expensive, and energy intensive." There's no truth to claims that a leak from your pipeline could seriously damage the Ogallala aquifer. There is no truth to news that your environmentally unfriendly project is over budget and losing partners. And there's no truth to reports that 47% of the steel you used in the pipeline you opened this week came from Welspun, an Indian steel company being sued by three other pipeline companies for delivering steel containing hundreds of defects verified by the PHMSA. It's all just lies, damned lies, fabricated by one hippie blogger who thinks he can get along riding his bike in South Dakota in December. (Actually....)

When oil company CEOs use the word truth, respond with snickers.