The company that is seeking permission to build a new crude oil pipeline between Canada and the U.S. Gulf Coast has wildly underestimated the damage that could occur in a worst case spill scenario, a University of Nebraska researcher warned this week.
Even a small, undetected leak from an underground rupture of the pipeline in the Nebraska Sandhills could pollute almost 5 billion gallons of groundwater with benzene at concentrations exceeding safe drinking water levels," University of Nebraska researcher John Stansbury said.
TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL pipeline would would carry 700,000 gallons of Canadian crude per day from the tar sands area of Western Alberta to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Along the way, the 36 inch diameter pipe would cross important waterways, including the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers in Montana, the Platte River in Nebraska and the Sandhills, where highly permeable soil covers the enormous Ogallala aquifer.
