That, along with “Game Over for the Climate”, which I think is a pretty legitimate concern.
That’s a silly objection. Extracting this Canadian oil is only going to marginally increase the total amount of atmospheric carbon. It’s not going to change the long-term outcome.
Whether or not the pipeline is built will have little effect on its extraction. The only thing that will keep this oil in the ground is if it’s too expensive to bring it out. Our choices are to 1) move it by pipeline, or 2) move it by rail. The former is both cheaper and environmentally safer.
I wanted to start a Straight Dope on the Keystone Pipeline thread because of the conflicting stuff I keep hearing but this will probably do…
Let’s ignore the environmental issues. We all can agree that the pipeline will have the same risks of any pipeline. For anything dealing with energy and transporting it, there are risks. And reasonable people can disagree on whether this pipeline is a tolerable risk.
I’m looking at the bread and butter of reasons why we should build this thing, namely the promise of jobs out the wazoo and being able to tap into the Canadian oil ourselves, which would be cheaper and have less political and social repercussions as stuff from the Middle East.
The problem is that as I understand it, the pipeline will NOT get us an appreciable amount of jobs (jobs building it will be temporary and it won’t create many permanent positions) and it will NOT help us in purchasing Canadian crude (the pipeline’s purpose is to allow Canada to be able to sell it to other countries, not us).
Even if there were no environmental concerns, what are the benefits of putting this pipeline in America if we’re not putting Americans to work and we’re not getting energy that is cheaper and/or alleviates our dependency on a volatile region for the stuff?
So, why can’t Canada just drill up this oil and sell it to us then?
That is true. Pipelines do not directly generate long-term employment. Once construction is complete they just sit there with oil flowing through them, requiring relatively little maintenance.
That is categorically false. The whole point of the pipeline is to ship heavy crude to American refineries. American refineries currently import a substantial fraction of their heavy crude, at greater expense (because it must be transported longer distances) and from less stable (than Canada) sources. The pipeline would displace such imports.
Of the products produced by American refineries–most importantly, motor gasoline–it’s true that about one third gets exported. This fraction probably will not change.
There is contention about this:
“The oil industry will sell their product where they will get the best price for it, (and) markets for diesel, in particular, are much more profitable abroad,” said Steve Kretzmann of Oil Change International, a clean-energy group opposed to the pipeline. “Those are growing markets. That’s what we base the assertion that this is primarily an export pipeline on.” (from Billings Gazette)
If the pipeline is built there is no reason to believe that the oil won’t go to the places which afford them the most profits and in the last couple of years the United States became a net exporter of petroleon products for the first time ever. (Chart)
One thing which would make me more supportive of the pipeline would be that an agreement is signed guaranteeing that x-percent of refined oil be used in America at market rates. I don’t know how feasible that would be but I do know that if the Canadian companies balked at such a stipulation out of hand, it would be evidence to me that the pipeline shouldn’t be counted on to assist our energy needs and if it won’t really help us with prices or relying on unstable geo-political regions for our oil, there isn’t much of a benefit overall.
No matter who the eventual buyer is there are affects on the overall market rates which can affect pricing. The effects in this case are likely very small. It’s already being pulled from the ground and sold now and the shipping cost savings are only a small percentage compared to the end price. I’d be more worried that imposing artificial limits on markets, like you propose, would produce less efficient results making the case even weaker for the pipeline. That requirement might even be enough that shipping via train, without that limit, would make more sense to the actors in question.
As is stands now, there is nothing that stops the folks in suits, ties and hardhats from selling all of their oil to China or anyone else in an emerging market and having us get none of it. This might be improbable, but if the jobs issue is already shot down and the “reduce reliance on Middle East oil” and “allow us to get oil cheaper” arguments are not that cut and dried, what are the benefits for America again?
I agree that the pipeline hold up is probably a matter of politics, but it is just possible that some areas are more environmentally sensitive than others. You know, like arable land versus desert.
Yes, we have, and it’s wonderful. We have more refinery capacity than we need to supply finished petroleum products to Americans, so we export the surplus. That’s good. You may recall in 2008 that we had a nasty oil price spike after refineries went off-line due to hurricanes and (in once case) a fire. This would be far less likely to happen today. Extra refinery capacity is good.
But, we still import crude oil–especially the heavy crude which is the only type of crude that many refineries can process. We import millions of barrels per day from Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. The Keystone oil would replace (some of) this.
Once they deliver the crude oil to American refineries, Canada will have no input into where it ends up–any more than a farmer selling grain to Archer Daniels Midland has input into where it ends up. Some of the gasoline produced will be exported, just as it is exported today. Extra refinery capacity is good.
The only way for Canada to sell their crude oil directly to China would be to pipe it all the way to a Gulf Coast terminal and contract directly with Chinese companies to ship it off. This would only be legal provided that their crude isn’t commingled with American crude at any point. But, current plans are that it will be commingled. And even if it wasn’t, the US doesn’t have the terminal capacity for significant crude exports, because they have been banned since the 1970’s.
The crude will come to the US. The refined products will go partly to the US, partly overseas.