Obama Delays Decision On Keystone Pipeline Yet Again 206
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports that once again, the Obama administration has pushed back a final decision on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline possibly delaying the final determination until after the November midterm elections. In announcing the delay, the State Department cited a Nebraska Supreme Court case that could affect the route of the pipeline that may not be decided until next year, as well as additional time needed to review 2.5 million public comments on the project. Both supporters and opponents of the pipeline criticized the delay as a political ploy. Democratic incumbents from oil-rich states have urged President Obama to approve the pipeline but approving the pipeline before the election could staunch the flow of money from liberal donors and fund-raisers who oppose the project. The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell said in a statement that "at a time of high unemployment in the Obama economy, it's a shame that the administration has delayed the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline for years." Activists say its construction could devastate the environment, but several State Department reviews have concluded that the pipeline would be safe and was unlikely to significantly increase the rate of carbon pollution in the atmosphere. Even if the pipeline was canceled, it said, the oil sands crude was likely to be extracted and brought to market by other means, such as rail, and then processed and burned."
Irrelevant... (Score:5, Interesting)
Every action that increases the cost of gasoline increases the profit in producing it.
What the anti oil people have failed to grasp is that they're making the oil companies rich at everyone else's expense.
If I didn't know better, I'd think the whole anti oil campaign were a conspiracy by the oil companies to raise prices. Because that has been the result.
We are only getting fracking in the first place because oil got expensive enough to justify the practice. If oil were cheaper then there would be no fracking.
Increase the cost further and see what happens next. But it won't be the green revolution.
Long story short, batteries are what is holding back green technology. Batteries are shit. Until that changes the green revolution will mostly be a luxury feel good item for the wealthy. Anyone outside of the elite simply won't be able to afford to go fully solar with an electric car, etc.
Which means we're on gas. And prices for gas will have to get astronomic before it will overwhelm the price advantage that gas has over electric.
Re:Irrelevant... (Score:5, Funny)
I power my car with the energy produced from coal therefore I am better than you lowly gas guzzling people.
The hypocrisy is mind blowing.
Does. Not. Compute. (Score:4, Informative)
My part of the country gets about 5% of our electricity from coal. The largest share (though not the majority) is natural gas, with big chunks of hydro, nuclear, and small but growing chunks of wind and solar and biomass/landfill gas. The carbon intensity of the electricity in my region per usable energy (say, per mile the vehicle can go) is less for electric than for gasoline, by a pretty wide margin.
Furthermore, if a person has PV panels on his own house, he can legitimately claim that his vehicle is low carbon emissions even if he does live in Kentucky or Ohio or Arizona or any other significantly-coal-dependent state.
Furthermore, coal plants are being retired all around the country. There's currently about 300 GW of coal fired capacity in tUSA -- by 2020 it will be closer to 220 GW. Folks who want less carbon emissions are opposed to building new capital infrastructure which will facilitate more carbon emissions for decades to come. Those folks would rather spend money (and create jobs) building wind turbines and solar farms and expanding subway and bus lines and switching more truck delivery to rails and switching from the manufacturing of gasoline fired autos to electric vehicles.
The folks who oppose the Keystone aren't in favor of coal fired electric power plants. That's pretty freaking obvious.
Re:Does. Not. Compute. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'd say ignorance. Its the same mentality that goes to the store and buys meat thinking that meat is a slab of product divorced from its source... aka a live animal at some point.
I am not a vegetarian. But I am often annoyed by my fellow urban dwellers that don't seem to understand where anything comes from or what you must do to sustain the system.
I really think everyone as children should be taken out to the country to see a real farm in action... and then follow that forward to the grain mills, dairies,
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I don't disagree... the point is that so many in our society don't understand anything about how the society is sustained.
They don't understand where anything comes from or how it is obtained.
That includes the fuel. Everyone just assumes it comes from the store as if its being produced on site and the price is something the clerk behind the counter makes up on an hour to hour basis.
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I power my car with the energy produced from coal therefore I am better than you lowly gas guzzling people.
Indeed, centralized coal power produces less pollution per unit of energy than the IC engine of a car. Running a car on coal electricity will produce less carbon pollution per mile.
The hypocrisy is mind blowing.
More like your understanding of reality is flawed. Efficiency comes with scale; electric power stations are quite efficient, IC engines are not.
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We've come a long way since the 1880s (Score:3, Interesting)
In the present day, the steam plant is located far from the occupants of the car, thus the cars are safer. But otherwise, it's the exact same technology. That's progress(tm)!
Come to think of it, have we made any really startling breakthrus since the internal combustion engine and computer itself? I mean, other than obvious stuff like improving those gadgets and linking them together.
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Come to think of it, have we made any really startling breakthrus since the internal combustion engine and computer itself?
Nuclear is a fairly startling breaktrough, although it uses steam for power generation. And solar. Get fusion working, and it will be a big change (but again, it will use steam).
Re:We've come a long way since the 1880s (Score:4, Insightful)
Nuclear is a fairly startling breaktrough, although it uses steam for power generation. And solar. Get fusion working, and it will be a big change (but again, it will use steam).
There are ways to directly generate electricity from fusion reactions. Lawrence Livermore Laboratories actually demonstrated it in the lab and came out with greater than 85% efficiency from this system (heat-based systems max out near 50%). Before I'm criticized for even mentioning it, yes, it's more complicated and difficult that just hooking up a turbine. It's still feasible, and should not be dismissed out-of-hand as an area of research in fusion power generation. In the long run, it would be much cheaper.
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Also, if the electric utility has nuclear power plants, his car is steam powered.
Only if it's powered by ground up eagles and other birds is it green.
Re:Irrelevant... (Score:5, Insightful)
What you fail to realize is that most of them could care less if the oil companies get rich or not. They are more concerned with controlling you and getting your vote. The evil oil companies is just a windmill for you to tilt at while they cheer you on claiming to do something about it while you gladly vote for them.
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Oh I know... I'm not against the pipeline.
Resisting it is meaningless. The oil will flow one way or another and making that process less efficient is not good for business or the environment.
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Painfully facile, even for you. You could try and make counter-arguments that the mining of the tar sands wont trash the environment, that the pipeline will somehow be built without eminent domain, that the constant leaks that happen with every other pipeline of length wont happen with this one, how the processed fuel wont be the dirtiest pe
Re:Irrelevant... (Score:4, Interesting)
What the anti oil people have failed to grasp is that they're making the oil companies rich at everyone else's expense.
This is not about facts. It is about a litmus test of ideological purity. Like spotted owls [wikipedia.org] and SDI [wikipedia.org], it has taken on so much symbolic importance as a political dog fight that the underlying facts no longer matter at all.
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The article postulates the Dems are trying to pacify the environmental flag wavers by not signing until after the next election cycle, an eerie parallel to the Republican need to court the far right during Presidential primaries and then distance the
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And it makes sense to appease the environmentalists on this one - It creates few permanent American jobs and they are shipping and refining a corrosive, dirty form of oil (and is awful at the field, as you mention). That oil isn't even going to be used in the US - it is destined for use mainly in South America. So the US bears all the risk, gets almost no return and Canada reaps the profits. If I were Obama, I'd punt on this too - no reason to piss off the environmentalist Dems for a bunch of short term job
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Myopic asshats will be myopic asshats.
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If thats the only 'fact' supporting why it should be approved, then it should not be.
This is why US law permits what it doesn't explicitly ban. So people like you can't just block things without a reason. Making money is not something that just magically happens. It occurs for two reasons, either someone is providing a service of value and receiving adequate compensation for it. Or someone is forcing someone to buy their shit. Making money in the absence of coercion implies that a good or service of value is being traded voluntarily.
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As it gets more expensive, there is economic pressure to use less, or to find more efficient ways to use the energy available.
Without market distortions, such as massive subsidies for current forms of energy production, higher costs lead to new energy generation methods.
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Except for it isn't because you can't reduce your energy consumption to zero.
What happens is that people must pay the price whatever it is until it reaches such a high price that it creates a real crisis.
You create the crisis and you might have riots in the streets or a general break down in society. So have fun with that.
But the prior while people will do what they can to reduce consumption they still need to drive to work, they still need to drive around town, they still need to use energy. And raising pr
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Self-correcting is relative to time. Many make the assumption that the time base is short and so destructive policies will have relatively immediate consequences. This is what confuses the global climate debate and the argument that when it gets hot enough, we'll switch to something non-carbon based. If the time base is short, that might work. However, if what we pump now means a runaway greenhouse effect 20-30 years from now, then we're screwed 20-30 years from now and no amount of "market forces" will fix
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As it gets more expensive, there is economic pressure to use less, or to find more efficient ways to use the energy available.
Oil (and consequently, refined petroleum products) has gotten more expensive because of speculation.
There was a hearing a few years back and at least one oil company exec came out and said oil shouldn't cost more than $65/barrel.
Further, he pointed out that no oil companies were interested in exploiting wells that would cost more than $80/barrel.
Because $80 is what the oil industry sees as near the maximum market value for oil in the future.
The entire difference between $65 and the spot price is market spec
DeVry MBA /|\ (Score:4, Interesting)
I know a guy who runs a sandwich shop. Next time I see him I'll tell him to throw away 50% of his ingredients, leave the ovens on full even when he's closed and take on employees whose sole function is to break things.
He'll be pleased as puch at all the extra money he'll make!
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Your economic analogy is false.
Imagine rather that ALL food prices are increased.
Will you pay or starve?
Ug... (Score:3, Insightful)
T
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1. The oil will be sold where they want to sell it regardless. They're currently shipping it through other pipelines and ferrying it by truck where there are no links. You did not stop the flow.
2. The canadians can build their own export facilities in Canada entirely bypassing the US. The canadians already take your position as a betrayal of our shared economic arrangement. The deal was that we'd provide certain assets to them and in return we got first bid on resources. You've made liars of us and the cana
Let 'em (Score:2)
The problem isn't just that it's not _benefiting_ America, the problem is that it's not benefiting America AND there's a substantial risk that there will be a large scale environmental disaster that the company who owns the pipeline will never pay to clean up.
We have no reason to OK it and every reason _not_ to OK it.
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There are other pipelines and other ways to move the oil... by truck and train amongst others. You're not stopping anything.
You're merely making something less convenient, forcing people to use technology more likely to produce leaks, oh... and you're pissing people off.
Net effect on the environment from your resistance?... Negative. Net economic effect? Negative. Net political effect? Negative.
Negative Negative Negative.
So where is the benefit of opposing it?
Its good for democrats... it rabble rouses their
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2. The canadians can build their own export facilities in Canada entirely bypassing the US. The canadians already take your position as a betrayal of our shared economic arrangement. The deal was that we'd provide certain assets to them and in return we got first bid on resources. You've made liars of us and the canadians are not happy about it.
http://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/markey-presses-transcanada-to-bar-exports-of-keystone-xl-oil-refined-products [senate.gov]
Previously, then-Representative Markey challenged TransCanada on this question at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on December 2, 2011. There he asked Alexander Pourbaix, TransCanada's President of Energy and Oil Pipelines, whether he would commit to including a requirement in TransCanada's long-term contracts with Gulf Coast refineries, as a condition of shipping, that all refined fuels produced from oil transported through the Keystone XL pipeline be sold in the United States. In response, Mr. Pourbaix stated "no, I can't do that."
Go ahead, build your own export facilities and ship the stuff to China.
I'd much rather Canada not externalize the environmental cost of that infrastructure onto the USA.
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I can assure you that predicting market scenarios is mor complicated that you make it sound.
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And yet that is exactly what happened.
So what you're saying is that my predictions are impressively accurate.
Thank you.
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What the anti-oil people also fail to grasp is not building Keystone does not prevent Canada from exploiting the tar sands. It just means we lose another ally, while China builds the more expensive pipeline and shipping channel through Hudson's Bay.
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Except that there's no profit to be made in distribution. Even refineries all over the world are struggling to make profits.
Most oil companies derive some 60-70% of their profit from digging the crap out of the ground. Refineries needs to be spectacularly well placed to make a profit refining which is becoming more of a rarity reserved for some of the super-refineries around the world, like the Reliance facility in Indonesia which was the catalyst for closures of some 7 refineries in the Australiasian regio
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Irrelevant... the oil will flow. You're not stopping anything.
All you're doing is annoying people and driving up the cost of oil.
Nothing more.
Re:Not at all (Score:5, Informative)
Every action that increases the cost of gasoline decreases the consumption.
Oil has a very flat demand curve. When the price doubled from $2 to $4 per gallon, demand went down about 3%. In the long run, people will buy more efficient cars and change their commuting patterns, but in the short run most people have no choice but to just suck it up and pay.
America produces most, but not all, of the oil it consumes. The oil companies make WAY more profit on domestically produced oil, because foreign governments capture most of the profit on their oil exports. If demand drops due to higher prices, the oil companies import less foreign oil (the least profitable) and make a windfall on domestic oil.
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Speaking of profits....I live in the Northeast, where we have high gasoline taxes. The "greedy oil companies" make about
7 cents on every gallon sold. The state and Fed governments make over 30 cents per gallon sold. So who's "greedy" ?
The suppliers of a needed commodity? Or our governments, who did NOTHING to make that energy available to the rest of us,
except give their "permission" to sell it?
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The "greedy oil companies" make about 7 cents on every gallon sold.
The gas station owner may make 7 cents, but the oil companies make far more than that. Otherwise the supply would disappear when the price dropped from $4 per gallon to $3.93.
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Except that hasn't really happened.
What is happening is that oil companies are laughing at you all the way to the bank.
At you... laughing... to the bank.
Keep it up... they find it hilarious.
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https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/best/bestworstNF.shtml
Never mind the private jets and yachts but they are important they need those thing. Or cargo ships being exempt from fuel tax, take away the free trade agreements and tax exemptions and shipping stuff from China in not profitable anymore. "Just 15 of the world's biggest ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world's 760m
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what in the name of god are you trying to say?
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I think he's saying Jesus will return to implement pre-existing conditions and be very involved with the health care debate.
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which means what in the context of this topic?
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If you want to know what Jesus would say and do you should read The Bible yourself. He's quoted heavily in the first half of the New Testament. Don't listen to what Christians these days say he would or wouldn't do or say. Obviously they don't actually read it themselves and don't know because you have gained a seriously warped idea of what Jesus actually stood for. Most of the lessons his famous parables are meant to teach were actually economic nature.
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Yeah but batteries are the only practical and portable means of storing that kind or power short of gasoline. And batteries in that context are crap.
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we have a hydrogen filling station in my neighborhood... no one ever uses it...
I'm all for green energy... but it won't be worth anything until we get batteries worth a damn or a replacement for batteries that are worth a damn.
That day is not today.
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Even if you adjust for inflation gas has increased in cost substantially. If the price of gas dropped to what it was 10 years ago adjusted for inflation most of the fracking operations around the US would be unprofitable.
These people don't understand that the market is a dynamic system. You change one thing and everything responds to it. They keep treating prices like static qualities that will sit still when you change things allowing them to patiently arrange everything one bit at a time until its just ho
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... You say that but you don't give me any way to even estimate what you mean by inflation.
Please give me a baseline.
And understand, that is more expensive in real terms which is proven by the fact that oil companies are finding previously unprofitable drilling methods to be reasonable due to higher prices. That means in real terms the price has increased.
If you say its 100 percent inflation then you're just foaming at the mouth.
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So... you're saying we should be paying 10 percent of what we're currently paying for gas?
So... 40 cents a gallon if we're paying 4 dollars today?
There's no way you can say our currency has been inflated that much since 1999. There is no way to justify those numbers.
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Attacking the pipeline does nothing to protect the oceans.
The rest of your post is largely meaningless buzzword ladin white noise.
after november... (Score:5, Insightful)
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"It seems he likes to make all of his decisions" to benefit other countries and political systems, including Islam and Putin, in like "Tell Vlad I'll have more room to work with him after the elections."
"He" is not operating in the best interests of the U.S. in any way I can see
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Hey, cut him some slack, he's evolving. One doesn't evolve overnight, it requires mediation time, time to kick the can down the road, time to figure out how to procrastinate in the hopes the current problem will go away all by itself due to magical influences such as pixie dust and clicking one's glittering slippers while uttering "We're not in Chicago anymore".
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The bigger issue is that the pipeline is being built by a private corporation (TransCanada) which will be using it to confiscate U.S. land (part of immenent domain) at the expense of the U.S. in economic development, and if something were to fail in the pipeline or be targeted, it would hurt the U.S. and the onus would be on us to repair the environmental damage.
If that wasn
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The bigger issue is that the pipeline is being built by a private corporation (TransCanada) which will be using it to confiscate U.S. land (part of immenent domain) at the expense of the U.S. in economic development, and if something were to fail in the pipeline or be targeted, it would hurt the U.S. and the onus would be on us to repair the environmental damage.
TransCanada will NOT confiscate US land, and has ZERO ability to implement eminent domain. The localities/States that work together to implement the utility of the pipeline do have the power of eminent domain, and can use it to clear the way for the pipeline (a utility). And that does not leave TransCanada off the hook for any environmental damage from the pipeline. Ask any pipeline owner about eminent domain and their legal obligations to maintaining the pipeline and the land it uses.
Build refineries in ND (Score:5, Interesting)
What they need to do is build refineries in North Dakota, where there is plenty of oil, and also natural gas to power them.
We don't want all the refining capacity of the nation to be in the Gulf where it could be all shut down by a hurricane. (stronger and more frequent due to climate change)
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An interesting idea. Distributed refining capacity would sound like a good idea.
I suspect that it was considered. At least, I would hope that it was considered.
I wonder what the cost, lead time, environmental requirements, etc. are for constructing a refinery.
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Re:Build refineries in ND (Score:4, Interesting)
This makes sense, but refineries takes years to build and perhaps a decade to come online. They also need to be built next massive water resources (which is why so many in the gulf are next to the Mississippi river) for cooling purposes and barge access.
Re:Build refineries in ND (Score:4, Informative)
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Still need pipes (Score:2)
If you're going to extract tar sands of their crude, then refining the crude in ND doesn't change anything. You've still got to ship liquid petroleum products from ND to the rest of the country -- and, in fact, the rest of the world since the USA is a net exporter of refined crude -- be it pipe, rail, or truck. Moving the refinery doesn't change the need for transport.
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I think the OP is taking about skipping tar sands and refining the oil and gas in North Dakota. On the US side of the border there's hundred of BILLIONS of barrels of sweet light crude. Not to mention trillions of cubic feet of natural gas. So far the only pipeline out of there goes to a superior Wisconsin refinery. And that's just for the oil. Natural gas is just burned off. There's no pipelines currently to move the crude to the major refining states. It has to be moved via rail and truck, which is
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Hundreds of billions sounds like a gross overestimate. Most estimates of US proven reserves are around 30B barrels.
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Texas needs water, not oil (Score:5, Interesting)
Why can't we have a pipeline that brings fresh water, instead of oil? That would be a lot more helpful. We've been a serious drought for years, and there's no sign it will let up.
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Why can't we have a pipeline that brings fresh water, instead of oil?
Just make it illegal to use water for fracking and agriculture while there's a drought on and you'll have plenty of water for people to drink. Oh, you really want the water to support those industries? Let industry pay for what it costs to get it if they rely on it so much.
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Yep, and where would this water come from? The Great Lakes perhaps...not on your grandmother's grave. The Great Lake states will not allow you to decrease the water level of those lakes because they need them for shipping. Aquifers? The farmers in Nebraska, Oklahoma Arkansas, and Texas are already draining the Ogallala Aquifer. And due to the drier conditions in those states due to increased temperature lately, the aquifer is not getting replenished as it should. The Mississippi River, see the Great Lakes.
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I read a book a while ago that dealt with that problem. A guy hauled an iceberg from Antarctica to the Gulf of Mexico, and used the empty oil pipelines from the oil boom time to push water to all parts of Texas and the Midwest.
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Any Canadian politician who wants to lose an election just has to propose piping precious Canadian water down to those Yanks.
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Any Canadian politician who wants to lose an election just has to propose piping precious Canadian water down to those Yanks.
We already let american companies bottle precious canadian water for your bottled water industry, doesn't seem to be hurting any of those politicians any.
Turtleman speaks (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actually the number of permanent jobs will be 35. http://www.newsweek.com/state-department-keystone-xl-pipeline-would-only-create-35-permanent-jobs-228898
Tax Gift for Oil - ND Needs the Pipeline (Score:5, Insightful)
North Dakota has saturated rail and road traffic trying to get it's crude out of the state. At the same time Natural gas is simply being burned off because there's no pipeline infrastructure to transport it. Pipelines that were being used to transport natural gas to the midwest from the east coast and gulf states will no longer be able to be used next year because they are being converted for use in transporting chemicals needed for tar sand conversion in Canada.
The reason big oil companies want the pipeline from Canada and not North Dakota is because there's a multibillion dollar tax loophole related to foreign oil processed in US refineries for export. Which is why the pipeline runs to the coast. Keystone Excel will have no effect on US fuel prices because it's not designed to sell fuel on the US market. It's quite likely that Keystone will result in refining capacity being taken out of the US market as it's used for export. All the signs point to this project actually costing the tax payer more at the pump in the end.
Let's also not forget the natural gas problems this creates for the upper midwest. They currently get their natural gas from Canada. Tar sand production need incredible amounts of natural gas. That's expected to increase prices people will be paying to heat their home. At the same time there's no plans now or in the future to bring more natural gas to upper midwest from the east coast. If anything they are losing capacity in order to support the tar sand production.
Re:Tax Gift for Oil - ND Needs the Pipeline (Score:4, Insightful)
Keystone Excel will have no effect on US fuel prices because it's not designed to sell fuel on the US market.
Oil is a global commodity. Increasing the supply or decreasing the demand anywhere will affect prices worldwide.
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Under current law the US has many 70s era export controls. Frankly there are a bunch of US only makers for petro products and finished fuels. Occasionally we have times when gas is relatively cheap in the US compared to the rest of the world. Albeit rare, usually only when the US economy slows leading to excess gasoline at refineries. Gasoline that cannot be exported. This isn't entirely uncommon in the world. For instance China is a big fan of acquiring the oil rights bypassing the market and settin
Updated Wire Service Headlines (Score:2)
Obama Delays Decision On Keystone Pipeline Yet Again
Canada ponders legalizing p2p filesharing for not-for-profit, personal use
Obama Approves Keystone Pipeline and Fast-Tracks Implementation
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I wish, but the Canadian government doesn't have a track record of using anything but strong words against the US in these sorts of disputes.
Obama = Coward (Score:3, Insightful)
I would have loved to been a fly on the wall in Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office when this non-decision was announced. Obama has once again taken the cowardly way out and punted a tough decision. He wants to continue to fundraise from environmentalists by saying "We're being tough on the Keystone pipeline and insisting it meets our environmental standards!" and then do the same with the big business crowd by saying, "We haven't said no to Keystone, we just want to make sure it meets our environmental standards." He doesn't actually want to make the decision, because then one crowd or the other will tell him to pound sand. Even though the entire job of being President of the United States is about making those decisions!
Worst president of my lifetime. Not even close.
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He wants to continue to fundraise from environmentalists by saying "We're being tough on the Keystone pipeline and insisting it meets our environmental standards!" and then do the same with the big business crowd by saying, "We haven't said no to Keystone, we just want to make sure it meets our environmental standards."
You forgot the blue-collar unions. They are very pro-Keystone, and he doesn't want to alienate them further, ahead of the 2014 mid-terms. So he's delaying screwing them until afterwards.
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Worst president of my lifetime. Not even close.
Let me be the first to commend you on your excellent writing skills for someone who is under the age of 6!
One day in your elementary school history class you will learn about the presidents from before you were born, including "The Decider".
Re:Obama = Coward (Score:4, Funny)
Worst president of my lifetime. Not even close.
Your writing skills are excellent for someone who was born after George W. Bush left office.
State Department Report was writen by Oil Execs (Score:2)
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Dither dither dither dither feckless dither (Score:5, Interesting)
Obama only acts fecklessly after endless dithering.
THAT is why you don't elect a "community organizer" (the politically correct term for "street agitator") President. They don't know how to lead.
I wonder who profits... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmm, I wonder if our beloved President 1% knows any 1%ers who, say, owns a railroad company?
Oh.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... [bloomberg.com]
I wonder how Burlington Northern's doing on this latest news.
The points that convinced me... (Score:3)
I'm all for the End of Oil. But the tar-sands vilification got so it pissed me off and I find myself in a surprising place - in the trench with companies I've never liked. What gets to me:
- Greenpeace created the "world's dirtiest oil" moniker with a large, sustained media campaign. I'm amazed it survived the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. I mean, really, it's worse than just spewing a fantastic amount of raw crude right into one of the world's most fecund ocean biomes and commercial fisheries, no way to clean it up at all? Greenpeace isn't a bunch of guys around a card table anymore, their budget is $300M/year. They love theatrical campaigns more than scientific ones; it's about what creates emotion, not real ecological results.
- Presuming (perhaps, a big presumption) that we keep on top of them with regulation, the open-pit mines are eventually filled back in and trees stuck on top - the ones where they've already done it are of course the first stop on the tour. Yes, the current mines are 200 sq. mi., "you can see them from space" ...where they look like a brown postage stamp on a green billiards table, the boreal forest being over 200,000 sq.mi. Know what else is 200 sq. mi. or so? New York City, which was a rich hunting and fishing land of the Manhattan Indians. It's not being restored to forest any time soon, because it provides living space for 8 million people, rather than 8000 Manhattans. The tar sands are providing what currently is an (unfortunate) necessity of life for 20 million people.
- Accounts vary (for some reason) but I tend to trust New Scientist Magazine as pretty objective - their figure was that it takes the release of 70kg of carbon to extract tar sands oil, compared to 50kg for conventional. But both barrels are then *burned* releasing 200-300kg (depends on gas/diesel/etc), so the total lifecyle increase of carbon is under 10%. Yes, that's bad, but concentrating all hatred of carbon onto one source of it is, again, theatre, not science. It's like banning 3000lb SUVs and feeling very virtuous as you buy a 2700 lb SUV.
- But above all, picking on these companies and their pipeline schemes is attacking the *producer*, not the consumption end. Speaking of "America is addicted to oil", how has that strategy worked out for the War on Drugs? It's funny, the same very liberal folks who will shake their heads at the raw stupidity of the Drug War ("all it does is drive up the costs and bring in more ruthless producers to fill the hole") imagine it will work on energy that everybody wants to buy.
I'm all for shutting down the tar sands - but by hitting the consumption end, with research and incentives for batteries, electric cars, thorium and fusion power plants...the latter having the much greater benefit of first killing off coal-powered electric generation, a greater greenhouse issue than all oil. But when the inflection point hits with electric transportation and oil consumption actually goes *down*, the most expensive sources (tar sands) will be the first ones shuttered. Speed the day.
PS: Yes, I'm from Calgary. But I don't work in oil/gas, nor does anybody close to me. This is not as much about Canada as you may imagine. Almost all the $200B invested up there is from American companies. We barely tax them - less for oil than Palin's Alaska or Cheney's Wyoming. Our cut was just jobs building it. My family pioneered Alberta for two generations before oil was discovered - and they'll be around after it's all gone. Good riddance; but the ridding has to *work*. To make it work, we have to change a whole technological base of a society, not just rail at scapegoats.
As Theodore Roosevelt said (Score:2)
I could carve a better man out of a banana.
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Let's not be so quick to the default presumption that his African heritage won out over the Irish he got from his Mum.
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Fascinating. Quoting people on the other side directly is tantamount to "attacking them".
If you think that, you might consider what you think about people who say such things.
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Yep, the NIMBYs and BANANAs will scream "No, no, no, no dangerous pipeline, no smelly industries or farms, no ugly windmills or cell towers". Then in the next breath they'll be "Why are we importing all this food and energy? We should buy local. And why does my cell phone reception suck?" And they'll never make the connection, ever.