SLIPPERY TRUTHS

摘要

After it was narrowly defeated in the Senate last November, the proposal to build Keystone XL will likely come before Congress again early in the 2015 session. The 1,200-mile, 36-inch-wide steel pipeline would transport both heavy oil and bitumen-low-grade crudes that need extra refining before they can be made into products such as gasoline-from Alberta's oil sands to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The pipeline has become a flash point, both for environmentalists and landowners along the proposed route, who have lobbied hard to stop it, and oil companies who have lobbied equally hard to push it through. With each side of the debate so entrenched in its own rhetoric, fact seems inextricable from fiction. But with data, it's possible to cut through some of the often-hyperbolic claims.