IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aen/journl/ej40-1-clay.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

External Costs of Transporting Petroleum Products: Evidence from Shipments of Crude Oil from North Dakota by Pipelines and Rail

Author

Listed:
  • Karen Clay, Akshaya Jha, Nicholas Muller, and Randall Walsh

Abstract

Using data for crude oil transported out of North Dakota in 2014, this paper constructs new estimates of the air pollution, greenhouse gas, and spill and accident costs from long-distance movement of petroleum products by rail and pipelines. Our analysis has three main findings. First, air pollution and greenhouse gas costs are nearly twice as large for rail as for pipelines. Second, air pollution and greenhouse gas costs are much larger than estimates of spill and accidents costs. Third, air pollution and greenhouse gas costs of transporting fuel by rail and pipelines are one-fifth to one-tenth of the costs of combusting fuel in motor vehicles. These results suggest that the policy debate surrounding crude oil transportation may be putting too much relative weight on spills and accidents, while overlooking a far more serious external cost: air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

Suggested Citation

  • Karen Clay, Akshaya Jha, Nicholas Muller, and Randall Walsh, 2019. "External Costs of Transporting Petroleum Products: Evidence from Shipments of Crude Oil from North Dakota by Pipelines and Rail," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1).
    • Handle: RePEc:aen:journl:ej40-1-clay
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/ejarticle.aspx?id=3277
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to IAEE members and subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Muller Nicholas Z, 2011. "Linking Policy to Statistical Uncertainty in Air Pollution Damages," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-29, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Harding, Matthew & Kettler, Kyle & Lamarche, Carlos & Ma, Lala, 2023. "The (alleged) environmental and social benefits of dynamic pricing," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 205(C), pages 574-593.
    2. Steve Cicala & Stephen P. Holland & Erin T. Mansur & Nicholas Z. Muller & Andrew J. Yates, 2020. "Expected Health Effects of Reduced Air Pollution from COVID-19 Social Distancing," NBER Working Papers 27135, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Amir Zeighami & Jordan Kern & Andrew J. Yates & Paige Weber & August A. Bruno, 2023. "U.S. West Coast droughts and heat waves exacerbate pollution inequality and can evade emission control policies," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-13, December.
    4. Alex Hollingsworth & Taylor Jaworski & Carl Kitchens & Ivan J. Rudik, 2022. "Economic Geography and the Efficiency of Environmental Regulation," NBER Working Papers 29845, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Holland, Stephen P. & Mansur, Erin T. & Muller, Nicholas Z. & Yates, Andrew J., 2021. "The environmental benefits of transportation electrification: Urban buses," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 148(PA).
    6. Godzinski, Alexandre & Suarez Castillo, Milena, 2021. "Disentangling the effects of air pollutants with many instruments," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stephen P. Holland & Erin T. Mansur & Nicholas Z. Muller & Andrew J. Yates, 2019. "Distributional Effects of Air Pollution from Electric Vehicle Adoption," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 6(S1), pages 65-94.
    2. Richard T. Carson & Jacob LaRiviere, 2018. "Structural Uncertainty and Pollution Control: Optimal Stringency with Unknown Pollution Sources," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 71(2), pages 337-355, October.
    3. Jaramillo, Paulina & Muller, Nicholas Z., 2016. "Air pollution emissions and damages from energy production in the U.S.: 2002–2011," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 202-211.
    4. Chan, H. Ron & Chupp, B. Andrew & Cropper, Maureen & Muller, Nicholas Z., 2015. "The Net Benefits of the Acid Rain Program: What Can We Learn from the Grand Policy Experiment?," RFF Working Paper Series dp-15-25, Resources for the Future.
    5. Nicholas Z. Muller, 2014. "Air Pollution Damages from Offshore Energy Production," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 4).
    6. Edward E. Schlee & V. Kerry Smith, 2022. "The welfare cost of uncertainity in policy outcomes," Chapters, in: The Economics of Environmental Risk, chapter 4, pages 65-76, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Muller, Nicholas Z., 2012. "The design of optimal climate policy with air pollution co-benefits," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 696-722.
    8. Chan, H. Ron & Chupp, B. Andrew & Cropper, Maureen L. & Muller, Nicholas Z., 2018. "The impact of trading on the costs and benefits of the Acid Rain Program," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 180-209.
    9. Muller, Nicholas Z., 2019. "The derivation of discount rates with an augmented measure of income," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 87-101.
    10. Nicholas Z. Muller & Robert Mendelsohn, 2012. "Efficient Pollution Regulation: Getting the Prices Right: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(1), pages 608-612, February.
    11. Karen Clay & Akshaya Jha & Nicholas Muller & Randall Walsh, 2017. "The External Costs of Transporting Petroleum Products by Pipelines and Rail: Evidence From Shipments of Crude Oil from North Dakota," NBER Working Papers 23852, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. V. Kerry Smith, 2018. "Benefits Transfer: Current Practice and Prospects," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 69(3), pages 449-466, March.
    13. Meredith Fowlie & Nicholas Muller, 2019. "Market-Based Emissions Regulation When Damages Vary across Sources: What Are the Gains from Differentiation?," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 6(3), pages 593-632.
    14. Welle, Paul D. & Medellín-Azuara, Josué & Viers, Joshua H. & Mauter, Meagan S., 2017. "Economic and policy drivers of agricultural water desalination in California’s central valley," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 194(C), pages 192-203.
    15. Art Fraas & Randall Lutter, 2013. "Uncertain Benefits Estimates for Reductions in Fine Particle Concentrations," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 33(3), pages 434-449, March.
    16. Wichmann, Bruno, 2013. "Environmental regulation of technically inefficient firms," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 121(2), pages 143-147.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F0 - International Economics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aen:journl:ej40-1-clay. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: David Williams (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iaeeeea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.