I didn’t know until today that a
major crude oil pipeline crosses Panama from the Pacific to the
Carribean just south of where I’m writing this. Reading about the
pipeline reminded me that a cross- mountain pipeline development
(Kinder-Morgan) has been approved to increase capacity for
transporting oil from Alberta to tidewater at Vancouver. When the
pipeline here was completed in 1982, a road was built connecting the
two oceans, a road we traveled a year ago to visit a friend in Bocas
del Toro. I noticed then a large, white pipe exposed where it crossed
ravines and rivers and buried—I presumed—where it didn’t. I
took it to be an aquaduct.
Originally, the pipeline facilitated
the transportation of crude from Valdez, Alaska to the Gulf Coast
refineries in the USA. Up to 20 tankers a day carried the oil to the
terminal on the Pacific side of Panama from where it was pumped
across the isthmus and reloaded onto tankers at Bocas del Toro on the
Carribean side. It makes for a mind-boggling potential for spills.
The Panama Canal has affected the
practicality of the tanker/pipeline/tanker sequence for moving crude,
but the pipeline has been adapted for forward/reverse shipment and
still moves oil between the USA and Ecuador as well as from Venezuela
to the Pacific
Back in 1982, scant attention was paid
to environmental impact, and “PTP [Petroterminal de Panama S.A.]
has applied little restraint in construction and operations of the
pipeline with consideration to the environment. The pipeline project
"was approved and completed in 1981–1982 before submission of
an environmental impact assessment".
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Panama_pipeline)
The pipeline crosses the Panamanian Cordillera and both as a result
of it and the road construction required to facilitate its
construction and servicing, there’s been a marked disruption to
delicate ecosystems, soil erosion, etc.
You can take a visual tour of the
pipeline courtesy of Petroterminal de Panama S.A. by clicking here.
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