Oil Sands and Pipelines

Apparently Enbridge is now saying “the company has transported almost 12 billion barrels of crude oil in the last decade, with a safe delivery record better than 99.999 percent”. (source)

So they’re willing to admit that they spill about 660,000 gallons of oil a year, on average (0.00001 of 12B barrels is 120,000 barrels or 12,000 barrels/year @ 55 gals/barrel?).

Somehow, that doesn’t sound like something I’d want in my back yard. My solar panels have been operating about a decade and they have not spilled a drop of oil. Admittedly, some oil was probably used in their manufacture. I’ve been following the debate about hydraulic fracturing (fracking); don’t even get me started on that.

Now, if someone would just manufacture some affordable NiFe batteries, that would make me very happy. I dread buying more lead acid batteries for power storage where there is better technology out there, but it lasts too long to be commercially viable.

I’ll be back when I have some up-to-date photos and some progress to report. The grass is growing so fast these days, now that we’ve gotten some decent rainfall, I’m spending half my project time, mowing.