Oil pipelines do two things. They transfer oil and they leak oil. Saturday, a 17-mile-long pipeline in southern California cracked and leaked at least 3,111 barrels, or 127,000 gallons, of crude oil. The pipeline, that was laid down when Elvis was still alive, is owned by Amplify Energy. Since it was the owners of the pipeline telling us it leaked 127,000 gallons, that means it was a lot more.

Why did this pipeline rupture? Did a ship slap it around? Did a shark give it a chomp? Did a seal use it as a backscratcher? The answer is probably, it’s just old. Also, it’s a pipeline. Leaking is what they do eventually.

Amplify says they stopped the leak and suctioned off the pipeline at both ends. Seeing as how they’re destroying the environment and sea life, California environmentalists are telling Amplify they got something for them they can suction off.

This spill is small compared to others, even one at that the same location, Huntington Beach, in 1990 which leaked 417,000 gallons. A 1969 spill along Santa Barbara was 4.2 million gallons, the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska was 11 million gallons, and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico was 134 million gallons. This new one would only fill about 20 percent of an Olympic-sized swimming pool, or 17 percent rinsed out of Donald Trump Jr’s hair.

Even though this amount of leaked oil is smaller than other oil disasters, it’s still catastrophic for wildfire…and it’s something you can use to remind people why we shouldn’t allow the Keystone Pipeline to cross our nation from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico…except you don’t need this example. You can use the Keystone Pipeline as an example against the Keystone Pipeline.

In 2019, the Keystone Pipeline burst and leaked 383,000 gallons of crude oil in North Dakota. This pipeline owned by Canada could barely wait to leave Canada to start leaking, as it did it 50 miles from the border. One reason the Canadian owners, TC Energy, want it to run through the United States is so that it doesn’t leak in Canada.

Catherine Collentine, an associate director with the Sierra Club has said, “It’s not a question of whether a pipeline will spill, but when.” The people who make the best cases against oil pipelines are the companies who own them.

The cost to the environment in our nation isn’t worth the profit we’ll get from the Keystone Pipeline. It may only create 20 fulltime jobs in the United States with the majority of earnings going to other nations, like Canada. We could probably create more jobs in this nation by syphoning off the residue from DJTJ’s hair.

We need less investment in sticky nasty-ass environment and animal-killing crude oil, and more investment in green energy.

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