If President Barack Obama rejects the Keystone XL Pipeline, oil spills will be three times more likely because oil from Canada will be exported on trains, reports Bloomberg:
A U.S. denial of Keystone XL this year would "undoubtedly" result in more oil spills by trains, [Brooking Institution’s Charles] Ebinger said in a phone interview. Trains’ higher accident rate comes mainly from leaking rail car equipment, spill records show. […]
Two Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd (CP). train car derailments, on March 27 in Minnesota and April 3 in Ontario, spilled an estimated total of 757 barrels of oil.
Without Keystone, designed to carry 830,000 barrels a day of oil, shipments of Canadian crude by rail would rise an additional 42 percent by 2017, according to RBC Capital Markets.
Additionally, transporting oil on trains is more costly than doing so via pipeline.
