It takes between 21 to 35 days for a Russian oil tanker to get to U.S. ports and be offloaded. It also takes 35 to 60 days for a tanker from the Middle East to make the same trek. It takes about 120 hours to load the tanker and up to 24 hours to unload and quite often it takes up to three days before unloading the tanker can even begin.

The average tanker burns 2,623 gallons of diesel fuel per hour. It is said that 22.38 pounds of carbon dioxide are created from burning one gallon of diesel fuel. So, in only one hour, a tanker ship hauling oil to a refinery in the U.S. creates 58,757.5 pounds of CO2 into our atmosphere.

Then considering the average travel time of the tankers before it even arrives, it would result in over 27 million tons of CO2 per trip escaping into our atmosphere. In comparison, your family car burns between six and nine tons of CO2 per year. Without considering all the equations necessary to account for all the tankers coming to the U.S. each year, let alone our own exports, will someone please explain to me how drilling our own oil and moving it through pipelines, along with importing oil from Canada via pipeline, will not be more environmentally “green” for the world?

Bruce Whittier

Southampton

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