Dirty Tar Sands Fuel Is Headed for the East Coast - Natural Resources Defense Council

Motorists from Maine to Maryland will soon be filling their tanks with gas increasingly derived from dirty Canadian tar sands oil, a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council says.

A flood of dirty fuel into these East Coast states would undercut their efforts to reduce carbon pollution.  The NRDC report found that under current plans, tar sands-derived gasoline supplies in eleven Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states (plus the District of Columbia) will soar from less than one percent in 2012 to 11.5 percent of the total by 2020, due to increased imports from Canadian refineries, fresh supplies of refined tar sands products from the Gulf Coast, and production from East Coast refineries that would obtain tar sands crude via rail and barge.

An influx of carbon-intensive fuels into the region, which in 2012 was virtually tar sands-free, will hurt the efforts to combat climate change, which has already caused billions of dollars in damage in those states, according to the report, “What’s in Your Tank? Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States Need to Reject Tar Sands and Support Clean Fuels.”

“Dirty gasoline supplies in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic are set to rise significantly, unless states take steps to keep out high-carbon fuel,” said Danielle Droitsch, Director of the NRDC Canada Project.  “By 2015 the volume of tar sands-derived fuel in the Northeast could grow six-fold, compared to 2012. Unless these states move as quickly as possible to clean energy, their efforts to combat climate change will suffer.”

Dirty Tar Sands Fuel Is Headed for the East Coast - Natural Resources Defense Council