The Keystone Pipeline Project

[Odainsaker 2,134]

Knee-jerk environmentalism forcing a fearful administration with election-jitters to once again cave...and I say this as an Obama supporter!

We already have major oil, natural gas, and petroleum products pipelines like these:

Along with a detailed natural gas pipeline network that looks like this:

One more line amidst the overlapping infrastructural tangle wasn't going to matter all too much.

Ironically, some just couldn't see the forest from the trees.

In the meantime, be sure that Russia and China are not holding back in laying out their new pipeline networks leading out of Central Asia to captive markets in Europe and the Far East, and, like A Nonny Moose pointed out, China and Japan will be more than happy to further slurp up Canada's additional oil in our stead. King Fahd of Saudi Arabia is smiling today.

  Edited November 11, 2011 by Odainsaker  

[sneakeypete 16]

Wait, so something actually came of this protest?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The weak-kneed flappers in the administration were taken in by a few people with signs and loud hailers. The pipeline will undergo yet another silly review. The will of the squeaky minority prevails again. No one asked the silent majority.

  Edited November 11, 2011 by A Nonny Moose  

[Odainsaker 2,134]

The news pundits suggest that the administration saw that the pipeline approval issue was pitting job-hungry industry labor unions against activist environmentalists. As the turnout and votes of both groups will be critically needed in next year's election, the politically calculated decision was made to put off the decision until 2013.

The campaign year 2012 will be the year of Further Reviews and Additional Studies as all sides try to duck and defer any hard decision making.

[x493x 446]

I guess they don't want to disturb the pot right before the election but after the election, it will go through. Now they are just discussing route changes not a potential abolishment of the project.

  Edited November 11, 2011 by x493x  

[hym 358]

I guess they don't want to disturb the pot right before the election but after the election, it will go through. Now they are just discussing route changes not a potential abolishment of the project.

And if you read TransCanada's statements on the issue, any changes to the proposed route will very possibly kill the project.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If they get tired of all the shilly-shallying, TCPL will run the pipeline to the west coast where it will sell this oil abroad. They won't have any problem running it through Canada.

Sometimes the environmental nuts cut off their noses to spite their faces.

[x493x 446]

When the reporters have asked people if they want the pipeline a lot say yes, just not near my backyard. Well, somebody is going to have to have it built near them or it's not going to get built. Sometimes the sacrifices have to be made if you want to get what you want.

[jacksunny 741]

TransCanada has made a deal with Nebraska to reroute the pipeline in that state. This is to avoid going through a large aquifer. Premier Alison Redford has also met up with US officials to try and convince them to approve the pipeline.

  Edited November 17, 2011 by jacksunny  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

TransCanada has made a deal with Nebraska to reroute the pipeline in that state. This is to avoid going through a large aquifer. Premier Alison Redford has also met up with US officials to try and convince them to approve the pipeline.

Yeah, but ... Yeah but. The U.S. Department of Skate is sitting on the fence waiting for the next shoe to drop or the next election, whichever comes first. They are preventing something like 20,000 jobs from being offered in the U.S. and about the same number here.

This kind of political bull roar is what is mostly wrong with electing a king every four years.

[Sim shady 12]

From the Washington post "Girling said Friday that the 13,000 figure was “one person, one year,” meaning that if the construction jobs lasted two years, the number of people employed in each of the two years would be 6,500. That brings the company’s number closer to the State Department’s; State says the project would create 5,000 to 6,000 construction jobs, a figure that was calculated by its contractor Cardno Entrix. As for the 7,000 indirect supply chain jobs, the $1.9 billion already spent by TransCanada would reduce the number of jobs that would be created in the future. A TransCanada statement Sept. 30 said the project would be “stimulating over 14,400 person years of employment” in Oklahoma alone. It cited a study by Ray Perryman, a Texas-based consultant to TransCanada, saying the pipeline would create “250,000 permanent jobs for U.S. workers.” But Perryman was including a vast number of jobs far removed from the industry. Using that technique in a report on the impact of wind farms, Perryman counted jobs for dancers, choreographers and speech therapists."

and more from fact checking from Think Progress

I seriously and strongly question the merits of this project as a "job creator" that it is being touted as.

  Edited November 18, 2011 by Sim shady  

[hym 358]

TransCanada has announced plans to split construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, effectively bypassing part of Obama's rejection of the pipeline.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

TransCanada has announced plans to split construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, effectively bypassing part of Obama's rejection of the pipeline.

This is called an "end-run". It enables U.S. oil producers in the North Western states to access the refining capacity of the gulf coast in a more timely fashion and reduces the need for middle eastern oil. The addition of the Alberta production would make the U.S. free of the middle eastern oil altogether, so that can be an added fillip when the fuss is over.

Meanwhile, we will be selling our Alberta oil off shore. We'd rather not but the rabid greens, undoubtedly aided and abetted by the eastern oil interests, have tossed some sand in the gears.

[Jazzmaster 716]

Was listening to an NPR (National Public Radio) report on this the other day...

Apparently Obama isn't entirely against it, but he felt there wasn't enough time to do a thorough investigation of all the environmental impact or whatever.

I guess I agree that we shouldn't be continuing to depend on fossil fuels since they won't last forever, but in the interim it just makes more sense to unleash ourselves from the middle East, don't ya think?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Was listening to an NPR (National Public Radio) report on this the other day...

Apparently Obama isn't entirely against it, but he felt there wasn't enough time to do a thorough investigation of all the environmental impact or whatever.

I guess I agree that we shouldn't be continuing to depend on fossil fuels since they won't last forever, but in the interim it just makes more sense to unleash ourselves from the middle East, don't ya think?

I see you've been taken in by the environmental lobby. The environmental assessments were all done and approved until the election showed up on the horizon and there was a bunch of (paid?) protesters picketing the White House. The one thing that can be said about Obama is that he bends where the wind blows even if it's an electric fan.

[Odainsaker 2,134]

It's a bit more convoluted than that down here. The originally proposed pipeline stirred up environmental concerns in Nebraska and even among some Nebraska Republicans due to a segment of the route going over a potion of the state's major aquifer. That was not an insurmountable issue until the project was spotlighted on the national level, after which it was heatedly conflated into the greater debate between those who wish to drill for oil everywhere and those who wish to abandon all fossil fuels and idealistically return to subsistence farming. The Obama Administration tried to be slick with its base by bluntly deferring the decision process off until after the upcoming election, and in foolishly doing so placated nobody. In the meantime, those seeking the pipeline began looking for alternate routes for the Nebraska section.

An already stupid decision on the Administration's part was then compounded when Congressional House Republicans, seeing another savory election boondoggle with which to deride Obama, tried to force the issue by attaching into unrelated legislation a requirement for approval of the pipeline project within 60 days, while knowing full well with advance warning from the Administration itself that such accelerated steps would likely lead to a summary denial of approval for the project. Just as well...the more contentious and embarrassing for the White House, the better will be the political campaign rhetoric, as the aim is less for a pipeline and more for a bludgeoning pipe. As the idea for an alternate route is still just being looked into and no concrete proposals have been made, the State Department argued that not enough has been submitted for its own reviewing bureaucracy to make any reasonable decision within the truncated timeframe, and so automatically denied approval. I'm sure White House aides leaned on the department to emphasize the "reasonableness" and "procedural precedence" of their decision, while downplaying any discussion about any actual merits of the project. Somewhere in travelling from first The Stupid to now The Absurd by way of The Asinine, our political leaders lost the discussion of the realistic merits and details of the project?

Sorry, TransCanada, but you are now merely an election year football for party politics. Ironically, while TransCanada smartly works for now just on the non-politicized segments of their pipeline, we may find that the alternate route they are exploring will be identified, detailed, planned, and proposed over the remaining year, with complete approval by 2013. Yes, I suspect when the election year dust settles, we will be right back where we originally started with a 2013 timetable, only everyone will be covered with bitter election year bruises.

  Edited February 29, 2012 by Odainsaker  

[Sovereignty 0]

I do think that President Obama's decision to reject that one, specific pipeline proposal must be viewed in the context of House Republicans trying to force his hand in order to score their own election-year victory.

However...

Ultimately, all fossil fuel resources on Earth are going to be developed, so we can set aside the idealism. The Canadians can ship the oil via pipeline to be refined in the U.S. or they can ship the oil via supertanker to China or some other location to be refined there, as our good man the Moose pointed out. Either way, that carbon is going into the atmosphere.

I happen to have one particular article bookmarked, entitled: "Say Yes to Canadian Oil Sands"

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/say-yes-to-canadian-oil-sands/2011/08/28/gIQAl0HmlJ_story.html?fb_ref=NetworkNews

The way it lays out the issue struck me as eminently logical.

edit: can't seem to properly insert a link, adding the url.

  Edited March 2, 2012 by Sovereignty  

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I certainly hope the pipeline is built. If Obama is reelected AND the pipeline is canceled, I will join the many protests I see.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I certainly hope the pipeline is built. If Obama is reelected AND the pipeline is canceled, I will join the many protests I see.

Looking from the outside, it seems the incumbent Obama doesn't have to worry about the GOPs little boys squabbling in the schoolyard.