Gunz wrote: knothead wrote: PACEDOG#1 wrote:Build it!!!!!
Can you respond to the question at hand PD? What is in it for us as a nation?
For one, we're not buying oil from the people that hate us. That's a plus in my book. Second, the pipeline will create more than a handful of jobs as alluded to by someone as it will require maintenance, transportion employees and a host of contractors to keep it going. FYI, there are already thousands of miles of pipelines crisscrossing our country carrying hazardous materials . They have been very safe and have contaminated no-ones water as some would have you believe.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-03-07/keystone-xl-energy-independence-isnt-a-good-reason
Give Me One Good Reason Obama Should Approve Keystone XL
Really, there could be two:
1. President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and economic-growth focused Washington want China as its new BFF, and plan to let Beijing know by offering up an energy supply from our friends to the North.
2. Obama, Kerry, and Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper have worked out a quid pro quo. The Yanks will accept a pipe carrying toxic sludge through America’s bread basket so long as Canada takes over counter-terrorism in Afghanistan, sends peace-keepers to Ukraine, and Harper himself places Justin Bieber under house arrest so he can’t tour in the lower 48.
STORY: The Petro States of America
Some American teens might not find that last measure in the national interest, but some version of these realpolitik rationales—overture to China, huge favor to Harper —are about the only ones left to explain why Obama hasn’t killed the proposed 875-mile final leg of pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico.
There appeared to be a number of strong arguments in favor of Keystone XL when it first became a national story, beginning with jobs. Several U.S. representatives and senators testified that the pipeline would yield 20,000, 40,000, or even 100,000 new jobs. The recession made those prospects extra compelling. Turns out they were extra optimistic, too. Now we know the pipeline might generate about 3,900 temporary (two-year) construction jobs, and about 50 permanent ones. (Should we really be surprised? The whole point of a pipeline is that it’s automated!)
The other big case for Keystone—also given full voice by pols who received campaign help from oil and gas lobbies—was the chance to rely on a friendly neighbor for oil rather than an unstable Middle Eastern regime. But now, thanks in part to fracking and the Bakken reserve in North Dakota, U.S. oil inventories are at a 21-year high; there’s a glut of unrefined oil sitting in Cushing, Oklahoma, and the U.S. is expected to become the world’s leading oil producer next year. And the sweet crude pouring out of the Bakken is of far finer quality than bitumen, the sour, thick oil sands extraction that’s effectively steamed out of the soil beneath Alberta’s former boreal forest. What’s more, Keystone XL isn’t really designed to serve the U.S.; it’s meant to get Alberta’s tar sands to Texas refineries and ready for export. The Keystone XL would better serve China’s energy “independence” than America’s.STORY: Keystone Pipeline Would Be too Little, too Late for Ukraine Crisis
Oh, but surely a $5.4 billion infrastructure project would provide the U.S. economy a welcome boost and added tax revenues? Yes, more than $3 billion over its lifetime, according to the market analysis in the Jan. 31 Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement on the Keystone XL prepared by the U.S. Department of State [PDF]. Yet before the U.S. collects taxes from refiners, resellers, and exporters, it will first spend hundreds of millions on subsidies so these companies can invest in the technologies needed to make useable fuels out of bitumen. One example:
Houston-based Motiva, which operates major storage facilities and scores of Shell gas stations, and is slated to receive between $680 million and $1.1 billion from U.S. taxpayers so it can deal with tar sands oil. So in the near term, economic stimulus related to Keystone XL will come from Washington, not be paid to the IRS.None of these arguments should particularly matter, though, as Obama has indicated that impact on the earth’s climate is his pass/fail for approving the project. This has led to a ridiculous effort to prove that the pipeline itself will not lead to a great deal more carbon entering the atmosphere. That’s a feint. The real question isn’t how carbon-intensive the three-foot diameter pipe is but how much carbon-polluting oil it brings to market.
Presuming the tar sands will be developed with or without the Keystone XL, State’s estimates of carbon emissions were modest in its Jan. 31 report. Even so, the report acknowledges that the project will accelerate climate change. Hence, says Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, international program director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, “President Obama now has all the information he needs to reject the pipeline.”
STORY: Did the State Department Fail Obama on Keystone XL?
A new report this week, using some of the same forecast formulas, is more damning yet. It suggests that State massively understated the consequences of the Keystone XL. According to Carbon Tracker’s analysis, by facilitating tar sands oil production the proposed pipeline will result in carbon emissions equivalent to 46 new coal burning power plants..."
(more at site)
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Where is the win for the US here? We get dirty oil, get to fund the technology (retrofit) to refine it through subsidies, and we export the oil to China? WTF?
My grandfather and uncle worked offshore in the Gulf for many years...my sister and her then husband both worked on the Alyeska pipeline during its formation...for Bechtol...and my brother is an oil-field troubleshooter...my daughter works in oil leasing in the Bakken formation...I am certainly not anti-oil...but I don't see the benefits to our country for approving this particular pipeline...except for a few very well placed individuals, most citizens would not benefit from Keystone XL.
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