Thank Mark Udall for opposing the Keystone Pipeline

Conservatives have been lying about the Keystone Pipeline for years. Here are some facts about it:

• The U.S. State Department’s analysis says only 3,900 would be employed directly for construction of the Keystone Pipeline if it is built in one year or 1,950 per year if work is spread over two.
• It would generate only about 50 jobs during operations once it’s built.
• It would carry “the dirtiest oil on the planet.”
• Tar sands is a form of petroleum so dense that at a temperature of 52 degrees Fahrenheit it is “hard as a hockey puck,” and must be heated or diluted with dangerous chemicals to be made to flow through pipes.
  Refining it into useful fuels also requires more energy — and hence more emissions — than lighter forms of petroleum.
• Oil flowing through the Keystone pipeline would result in an increase in U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases equivalent to adding somewhere between 770,800 and 4.3 million passenger vehicles.
• Pipelines are hazardous. An average of 97,376 barrels (4.1 million gallons) of petroleum and other “hazardous liquids” have been spilled each year in pipeline incidents over the last decade. These incidents have claimed an average of two lives per year and resulted in more than $263 million in annual property damage as well.

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Thank Mark Udall for doing what’s right for America rather than caving to the oil industry.