In The News...

If you watched trumps press conference after the meeting you'd know he said himself that he had nothing to do with setting up the meeting...he just showed up when and where they asked/told him too.
 
yep...Trump's policies are finally starting to have some effect on the economy and stock market....
 
It'll be so much better when you guys cut yourselves right off from Canada and source all your resources in house.........oh wait a minute?
 
The gas isn't coming from Canada, it's from Ohio, specifically from fracking. Trans Canada is just the company that owns it. A few things here from someone who works in this field... firstly, very good thing no one got hurt. That's the most important thing, and it doesn't always happen that way. Secondly, it sucks that it happened. That's obviously a given. Ironically, it's good that it caught fire, because it's dramatically less polluting when natural gas burns, and much safer as well because the gas can't migrate and cause problems elsewhere. When this kind of thing happens the section of pipeline is valved off, and it is allowed to burn off because that's all you can really do, and it is safe once the area is secured. Oil pipelines and transport (rail, truck, etc) is much worse when they leak, because they actually contaminate, natural gas either blows or burns away.

Which brings me to number 3, natural gas pollutes dramatically less than either oil or coal. Natural gas is mostly methane, which when burned produces co2 and water, compared to the much more polluting by products of oil or coal. We need to get away from hydrocarbons, and we need to accelerate that process, but the fact is that our modern world requires lots of energy to operate. Even if we found a perfect clean energy source today, it would take years to develop the infrastructure to distribute it to everyone. Until then, switching as much as possible to natural gas or nuclear reduces our footprint until we can get there.

Finally, pipelines are the safest and most efficient form of transporting hydrocarbons. There are, and will be incidents, but compared to even rail the overall percentage of leaked product is very significantly less. They are everywhere, and most people don't even know they are there. Federal law mandates inspections several times a year, and during construction they are constantly inspected. Tougher codes and standards could be implemented, but in reality no other product you commonly come into contact with is inspected as much both during and after construction. There is a shift in pipeline construction to higher grades of steel, and subsequently thinner wall pipe, and robotic welding to speed up and automate construction, both of which I'm not seeing the benefits of because price is the driving factor. Lower grades (less carbon), more ductile, and thicker pipe sections welded together with traditional methods are more expensive, but provide a greater margin of error. Pipelines are one of the most highly engineered systems, but maybe engineering needs to step back and start realizing that pushing the envelope of materials needs to be done in another industry, rather than the infrastructure of extremely dangerous materials across continents. My .02.
 
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