"If completed, it will pump 1.1 million barrels a day of unrefined tar sand fluid
from tar sand mine fields in Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast. Tar sand oil is not
conventional crude oil. It is a synthetic slurry that, because tar sand oil is
solid in its natural state, must be laced with a deadly brew of toxic chemicals
and gas condensates to get it to flow. Tar sands are boiled and diluted with
these chemicals before being blasted down a pipeline at high pressure. Water
sources would be instantly contaminated if there was a rupture. The pipeline
would cross nearly 2,000 U.S. waterways, including the Ogallala Aquifer, source
of one-third of the United States' farmland irrigation water. And it is not a
matter of if, but when, it would spill. TransCanada's Keystone I pipeline, built
in 2010, leaked 12 times in its first 12 months of operation."
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12112-join-the-blockade-of-the-keystone-pipeline