During the debate Romney brought this up again as part of his position on energy independance. He’s in favor of allowing them to get this pushed through.
Can someone tell me what the upside to this would be?
From what I could find on the topic it seems like it serves no benefit to the US and has nothing to do with our energy independance.
-It’s TransCanada company’s oil, not ours.
-The reason TransCanada wants to run the line down to the gulf is because Canada itself won’t allow them to run the line to their own coastal refineries.
-TransCanada would be exporting most of this oil to places like Asia anyways.
-The pipeline itself is not very environmentally friendly.
The only possible reasons I find for the pro side are:
-It’s a nice thing to do for a big company of one of our allies.
-We could buy gas from this Canadian company instead of places like Venezuela.
-A few thousand temporary construction jobs for Americans.
Pretty weak. So why the big push by Republicans for this? I’ve heard the Koch Bros somehow have a vested interest in getting this thing done but the connection is not clear.
From a potential environmental disaster point of view, it would make sense to transport crude oil less miles. Society as a whole also pays less for energy by reducing the logistics costs of transporting crude different places around the world.
It makes more sense to transport crude from Canada to the US than from Canada to Asia. This also would result in less crude transported from the middle east to the US.
Risks too great? There a crude pipelines all across this country. How do you think most of the crude get’s transported from domestic oil fields?
If the keystone pipeline isn’t built then Canada will build a pipeline from the central area of Canada to the west anyway so the oil can be loaded onto cargo ships to Asia.
The point isn’t that there are pipelines now. The point is there are currently no pipelines where the Keystone would go.
You get that some things aren’t good in some areas right? A candle is okay on your dining room table, but a bad idea in a grain silo, right?
Never mind that the idea that the keystone will impact our energy costs is completely nonsense. No matter how much oil we produce the prices will stay almost exactly the same. The only thing more oil production in America does is make oil companies richer.
The benefits for the pipeline are mostly for the oil exporting companies in the U.S. Guess which party largely represents their interests in Congress.
On the other hand, there’s a higher environmental cost of extracting oil from the tar sands compared to pumping it up from underground.
Actually, it probably will impact gas prices–negatively. Right now, tar sands crude is going to domestic refineries in the U.S. The Keystone XL will divert that crude to the export refineries in Texas, reducing the domestic supply and driving up prices at the pumps.
I think that was their first preference but the Canadian goverment has told them no since it would have to pass through a lot of First Nation reserves.
