Keystone XL Pipeline Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, let me thank my colleague from Rhode Island. He and I did travel to Havana, Cuba, earlier this week. Interestingly enough, we sat down with the scientists and the people responsible for the oceans and other natural benefits in Cuba to discuss global warming, and the conversation started at the same place. Even with these scientists, there is no question they can see the impact, and they started their predictions about the rise of the ocean levels--and the Senator from Rhode Island knows this far better than I do--with their anticipation that the ocean levels will rise over a foot in just 10 or 20 years and then twice that over a period of 50 years or more. That will have a profound impact on the island, the archipelago of Cuba, and the United States.
Senator Whitehouse of Rhode Island, more than any other Senator, has really brought this issue home--not just to his home but to the Atlantic Coast States--and has reported on the impacts they face. Now, I live smack dab in the middle of the country--in Illinois. I can tell you we appreciate there are changes taking place on this planet that are not in our best interests--nor will they leave our children and grandchildren a better place to live.
The obvious question we face is what will we do in this generation. This bill, S. 1, which has been chosen by the Republican majority, has given us a venue finally to raise some important environmental issues which have been ignored for too long.
I know the object of this bill was to build a pipeline. TransCanada, a Canadian company, wants to build a pipeline through the United States. They may or may not sell any oil from it in the United States. We had a vote on that yesterday, and the Republicans overwhelmingly said they would not require them to sell their oil in the United States. They may or may not use American steel to build their pipeline. We had that amendment yesterday, and the Republicans voted overwhelmingly that there is to be no requirement to use American steel to build this pipeline. Yet it is characterized as an American jobs bill. It is hard to understand that characterization.
If nothing else, whatever happens to this bill--and it may not have a great fate ahead of it, if it is not changed significantly because the President has already threatened to veto it--what the Senator from Rhode Island said is significant. After years of denial from the other side of the aisle about the issues of global warming, we may have just reached a point where we are finally, on a bipartisan basis, going to acknowledge the obvious--the scientific facts which have been given to us over and over and over. That is a step in the right direction, and so I want to thank my colleague from Rhode Island.
AMENDMENT NO. 69
Let me take 2 minutes to say a word about my pending amendment, which may come up for a vote shortly. It is amendment No. 69.
What I have said on the floor is there is a dirty little secret about the Keystone Pipeline. You don't take Canadian tar sands and turn them into gasoline and diesel fuel without filtering and refining out some pretty horrible things. What is filtered out is called petcoke, and petcoke is going to be produced in the refining process if this pipeline is ultimately built--over 15,000 tons a day of petcoke, the byproduct of this refining process.
If you look at it and you think to yourself what impact will that have, it could have a very negative impact. In my city of Chicago, which I am very proud to represent, as well as in other communities, petcoke piles have become a challenge to the public health and the people in the community. I am asking in my amendment that we establish a standard of safety when it comes to petcoke--that we establish a standard of transportation and storage of petcoke to protect American families and children from the hazards of breathing petcoke dust.
This is a simple public health amendment, and I hope my colleagues will support it.
I yield the floor.
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Mr. DURBIN. Until very recently, of course, the price of a barrel of oil was high enough to justify tar sands, their extraction, the cost of transportation and the additional cost of refining them into a final product. Since that time, the cost of oil is almost half today what it was when that report was written.
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It is significant that the first bill of the Senate Republican majority is a bill to build a pipeline for a Canadian company to bring tar sands across the United States to be refined in Texas and then sold overseas. That is the highest priority of the Republican majority.
There are those who, based on what the Senator just said, question whether this is economically viable with the price of a barrel of oil today. I am not an economist in energy, but it strikes me there has been a significant change in the premise of this whole project.
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Mr. DURBIN. Seeing no one on the floor, I would like to say a word about an amendment which will be voted on. I believe it is the second in the queue, and it is the amendment I have offered relative to petcoke.
Petcoke is the product derived from the refining of Canadian tar sands, and if you happen to live in some communities in America, petcoke can be a real problem.
This is the city of Chicago, IL. You can see some of the bungalows and houses here, and right across the railroad tracks you can see mounds of petcoke coming in from the British Petroleum refinery. They generate somewhere in the range of 6,000 tons a day of this petcoke and pile it up right here. It is ultimately transported to different places, but it sits here. It obviously is a hazard to people who live nearby. It blows in the wind, creating public health issues and real concern for families with children with asthma, respiratory disease.
I have an amendment, and it is very basic. No. 1, the amendment talks about making sure there are standards and rules for the storage enclosure of petcoke. Most of the cities--whether it is Long Beach, CA; or Detroit, MI; or Chicago, IL--are trying to find established standards to enclose this petcoke so it doesn't blow freely in the atmosphere.
Senator Hoeven spoke earlier and said it was not carcinogenic. Those findings related not to the breathing in of this dust but to the ingestion of petcoke itself. We have yet to establish that this is a benign substance, and we are trying to take care to protect families who might be exposed to it.
I am not surprised to see that there has been a letter issued by the National Association of Manufacturers opposing my amendment. They start by saying that petcoke is a valuable, essential commercial product that is used in a wide array of applications. I am not stopping that at all. Anyone who wants to take this petcoke and use it to produce energy and power generation, cement kilns, steel, glass, as long as they comply with basic environmental standards, be my guest. But to store it in such a fashion that it can blow all over and cause public health hazards is unacceptable--it should be--in a modern society. Secondly, if those who store it end up, we find over the long haul, creating a long-term hazard to the environment, they should be held legally responsible.
That is the extent of my amendment. I am not surprised that the National Association of Manufacturers would oppose it. But I would ask each and every Member to consider the possibility that if they lived across the tracks from this kind of petcoke conglomeration--I have seen it. It is horrible, and we are fighting it in the city of Chicago. The company that owns the petcoke--the Koch Brothers. So it shouldn't be any surprise that the National Association of Manufacturers took the position they did.
I hope that all of us who may be subject to this kind of dumping of petcoke near a city in our State will think twice. Let's at least have some standards for storage and enclosure to protect the people in our States, and let's make certain that if there is ultimately environmental damage here, that the parties who make the profit off of petcoke are ultimately responsible.
That is the extent of my amendment.
I yield the floor.
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, this is the petcoke amendment. There are communities in this Nation--Chicago, Detroit, Long Beach, CA--and it may be coming to other areas soon. Petcoke is the byproduct of Canadian tar sands when it is refined. This pipeline will generate 15,000 tons a day of petcoke that has to be stored. We are asking that it be stored responsibly so it doesn't blow through towns and neighborhoods that I and my colleagues represent, and let's establish standards for that purpose. It can still be used legitimately for many products, but let's make sure it doesn't cause respiratory problems for the people we represent.
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