Will a pipeline like this one in Alaska soon run tar sands oil all the way to refineries on the Gulf Coast?

>> Concern mounts that a Canadian company’s plan to transport more tar sands oil across the continent will cause environmental harm and fail to make a dent in U.S. energy prices.

—

For TransCanada, the timing couldn’t have been worse.

First, there was BP’s runaway well in the Gulf. Then, on the night of July 25, the steel skin of a 30-inch-wide oil pipeline split open in a wooded stretch of southern Michigan. By the time the flow had stopped, upwards of 1 million gallons of toxic crude had disgorged into a nearby creek and polluted the Kalamazoo River.

TransCanada doesn’t own the ruptured pipeline — it belongs to the company’s top rival, Enbridge. But the spill in Michigan and the disaster in the Gulf have led both the public and regulators to cast a more skeptical eye on what once looked like a sure thing: TransCanada’s plan to build a $12 billion network of pipeline that would roughly double the capacity connecting Canada’s vast­­ — and highly controversial — tar sands oil reserves to U.S. refineries. Continue reading Once on the Fast Track, Tar Sands Pipeline Faces Tougher Scrutiny | OnEarth →