As House Republicans offered a new bill and green activists unveiled a report related to Canadian oil sands crude today, government regulators revealed that they do not record how much of the controversial heavy fuel is transported daily through U.S. pipelines.

In explaining its lack of data on diluted bitumen, or dilbit -- the technical name for the fuel that drives much of the safety debate over projects such as the Keystone XL pipeline -- the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration stated a plain truth in the oil-shipping industry: Types of crude are often sent in batches based on where producers are willing to pay the necessary shipment tariffs.

SPECIAL REPORT

With the heft to carry half a million barrels of oil daily, the $5.3 billion Keystone XL pipeline is a huge proposal. But behind the furor over it lies an even bigger question: How should America approach the massive fuel reserves that its northern neighbor is working overtime to tap? Click here to read the report.

"These systems transport a lot of different crude oils," PHMSA Engineering and Research Director Jeff Gilliam told an expert panel at the National Academy of Sciences today. "One day it might be simply crude that's produced normally. The next day it might be a dilbit blend or [synthetic oil-dilbit] blend."

Questions from panelists indicated that NAS could respond to the challenge of evaluating dilbit transportation without pipeline statistics specific to the fuel by comparing pipes that move mostly Canadian crudes with those that do not.

But the subtle differences between dilbit, the viscous Canadian crude that raises the majority of safety concerns for environmentalists, and the partially upgraded oil known as "syncrude" played no role in today's loudest political volley over pipeline risks.

House Republicans took their shot this morning with a new bill, authored by Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.), that would fast-track the sections of Keystone XL outside his state by scrapping a fresh environmental review the Obama administration announced last month (Greenwire, June 15). The legislation takes a more streamlined approach than Terry's previous attempt to override the White House's rejection of the XL line by no longer giving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission power over its permit, a move that Senate Republicans avoided in their version of the proposal.

The green groups that have spent years battling the oil industry over the $5.3 billion XL line, which would nearly double U.S. import capacity for Canadian oil sands crude if approved, spent their day focused on Wednesday's two-year anniversary of the 800,000-gallon oil spill from a failed oil sands crude line in Michigan.

The National Wildlife Federation (NWF), joined by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), hammered the company behind that Michigan spill with a new report today that aimed to make Enbridge Energy Partners LP a more central player in their campaigns against Big Oil.

Citing Enbridge-provided data that showed more than 800 spills on its lines in Canada and the United States between 1999 and 2010, NWF slammed the company as a bad actor that "cannot be allowed to expand without strict oversight and scrutiny. Otherwise, the risk of another serious spill is too great."

The group also offered seven policy prescriptions that it said would limit oil industry influence, including pipeline-specific changes and far broader reforms such as a price on carbon and campaign finance reform. NWF, NRDC and other conservation groups have planned anti-pipeline protests in multiple states timed to Wednesday's anniversary under the aegis of "We Are Kalamazoo," the name of the community affected by the 2010 spill.

The NAS panel meeting today is not expected to rule on the relative safety of dilbit in pipelines for another year, at which point it will either conclude that the heavy fuel is no less safe than conventional crude or extend the study for six months to advise PHMSA on crafting stronger regulations (Greenwire, June 27).

Click here to read environmentalists' new report on Enbridge.