Probably not, was just pointing it out, it could effect a very small portion of the US, if any.
Why do you particularly care if they ship it to Texas? It's not like Texas refineries won't otherwise get their crude oil.
You know, statistically I'll be dead in 30 years so it probably won't affect me directly...but IMHO oil by-products are going to be the most transportable BTU's available then too...and you guys are gonna want to have a reliable source to fill that niche...
Fair answer. I actually disagree and I think we'll have been weened off oil significantly in 30 years (just one of my crazy guesses)... but, fair point.
If your concern if the heat, I have to say you are too sensitive to that. It is a insignificantly small percentage of land, and it give mammals a warmer place to take refuge for a small bit of time. I would say it is beneficial rather than harmful in that regard.
The pollution aspect for me is just a WAG. Is it better or worse than other means of transport. I think that's the $64,000,000 question. One way or another, we are still dependent on oil.
You were doing so well... this is a terribly ridiculous statement.If your concern if the heat, I have to say you are too sensitive to that. It is a insignificantly small percentage of land, and it give mammals a warmer place to take refuge for a small bit of time. I would say it is beneficial rather than harmful in that regard.
So no pipeline supporters can say if there's any benefit of the pipeline to Human-Americans to offset the risk, the cer ude of oil spills due to the typical oilco/pipeline operator's lack of (expensive) pipepline maintenance.
Like with the financial sector getting handslapped, they all know "settlement" fines are vastly offset by profits from low maintenance.
Yellowstone River Oil Spill Will Cost Exxon $135 Million
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/1...n_1077106.html
How many $Ms profit does Exxon get out of that pipeline? We know that suck down $Bs in profit every quarter.
I'd like to see the penalty for oil/chemical spills upped to about $10K/barrel, instead of the less-than-market-price of $35/B. The penalty has to be dramatically dissuasive. and the penalty should be additional to the full costs of cleanup. At least maybe H-A's could claw back some of $10Bs in tax expenditure handed to the oilcos.
Congress Moves Toward Tougher Stand on Pipeline Safety, But is it Enough?
The pipeline industry reports more than 100 significant hazardous liquid spills each year [4]. (See a map of those spills [5]). Every year, an average of 275 accidents kill 10 to 15 people and injure five to six times as many.
The “Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011 [6]” would double potential fines for violations (up to a max of $2 million), require automated shutoff valves for new and replaced pipelines, and hire 10 new safety inspectors to join the current 124.
But as the Associated Press [8] noted, the bill doesn’t implement several recommendations from a National Transportation Safety Board investigation [9] of the natural gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, California [10] that killed eight people last September (the San Francisco Chronicle has a recent series on the disaster [11]). One of those recommendations [12] is that automated shutoff valves be installed on already existing pipelines (particularly old ones in highly populated areas, which are prone to accidents).
Safety experts also say that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration [13], the federal agency responsible for regulating the vast network of 2.5 million miles of pipelines, needs many more inspectors to do the job right. The pipeline agency simply doesn’t have enough inspectors [14], or money to hire them, a New York Times investigation recently found.
A recent Congressional Research Service report on pipeline safety [15] found a long-term pattern of understaffing. Which means that it’s often pipeline workers who notice and report problems – if they catch them in time.
In recent years, a series of major accidents have further raised the profile of dangerous pipelines. In addition to the San Bruno blast, 800,000 gallons of oil spurted into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River [16] last July after a 30-inch pipeline sprung a leak. Another 42,000 gallons spilled in July into the Yellowstone River in Montana [17] from a ruptured pipe.
Thousands of other pipelines could potentially share the same fate [10]. More than 60 percent of the country’s gas pipelines are at least 40 years old, and they often aren’t compatible with the latest in safety technology (the Philadelphia Inquirer has a recent series on aging pipelines [18]).
http://www.truth-out.org/print/10609
I take it you have never seen pictures of the caribou congregating around the warm pipes in Alaska.
More bouton's doom and gloom.
He would have us all return to the stone age.
Those would be above ground pipes, no?
They aren't congregating around areas of thawed permafrost.
As S Gears Up For Arctic Drilling, It Has Another Massive Spill in Nigeria
An oil spill near the coast of Nigeria is likely the worst to hit those waters in a decade, a government official said Thursday, as slicks from the Royal Dutch S PLC spill approached the country’s southern shoreline.
The slick from S ’s Bonga field has affected 115 miles (185 kilometers) of ocean near Nigeria’s coast, Peter Idabor, who leads the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, told The Associated Press. Idabor said the slick continued to move toward the shore Thursday night, putting at risk birds, fish and other wildlife in the area.
S , the major oil producer in Nigeria, said late Thursday the spill came from a “flexible export line” connecting the offshore field to a waiting tanker. The company published photographs of the spill, showing a telltale rainbow sheen in the ocean, but said it believes that about 50 percent of the leaked oil has already evaporated.
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/1...spill-nigeria/
These oilcos really have a wonderful mastery of their business.
Keystone XL pipeline: Oil chief issues threat to Obama over decision
The head of the US's biggest oil and gas lobbying group said on Wednesday that the Obama administration will face serious political consequences if it rejects a Canada-to-Texas oil sands pipeline that has been opposed by environmental groups.
Jack Gerard, the president of the American Petroleum Ins ute, said TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline would definitely play a role in this year's national elections.
"This issue is very simple and straightforward, it's about jobs and national security," Gerard told reporters after giving a speech on the state of US energy.
"Anything less than approval or acquiescence in allowing the pipeline to go forward would be inconsistent with the vast majority of Americans," Gerard said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...ef-obama/print
==========
it's about jobs and national security
HE LIES.
the jobs angle has been thoroughly debunked
national security covers a mul ude of UCA-profiting boondoggles.
ING LIARS
IT'S EXCLUSIVELY ABOUT OILCO (export) PROFITS and this mofo getting paid to LIE.
Unequal Risks and Benefits for Citizens in Six States on Keystone XL Pipeline Route
If the Keystone XL oil pipeline were approved today, residents in the six states along its route would not receive equal treatment from TransCanada, the company that wants to build the project.
The differences are particularly striking when it comes to tax revenue and environmental protection. States with stronger regulations have won protections for their citizens, while other states sometimes focused more on meeting TransCanada's needs.
In Kansas, for example, lawmakers gave TransCanada a 10-year tax exemption, which means the state won't receive any property tax revenue from the pipeline. Meanwhile, each of the other five states—Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas—would earn between $14 million and $63 million a year, according to U.S. State Department estimates [4].
Click here for a chart [5] that compares how the six states are dealing with the Keystone XL pipeline.
When it comes to route changes and protection for landowners, residents of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas have fared the worst, because their states haven't created any regulations to safeguard their interests.
"All the power is in the hands of the pipeline companies," said Chris Wilson, an independent environmental consultant from Texas who opposes the Keystone XL. Landowners along the route "are really screwed…there's no one in the government they can call for help."
The Obama administration put the Keystone XL on hold [6] in November, saying it needed another year to reassess the environmental risks the project could pose. Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, are trying to force [7] the president to make his decision by February 21. The pipeline would move oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Because the Keystone XL would cross state boundaries, both federal and state agencies are involved in its regulation. The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA [8]) handles safety issues, such as pipeline thickness and operating pressure. Individual states are responsible for pipeline siting, the process that determines a pipeline's exact route within state borders.
But only the state of Montana has chosen to exercise that power, leaving citizens who object to the pipeline's path in other states no option but to s out money for a court battle, or appeal to local officials who often lack the resources and experience to challenge a major corporation.
In Montana, however, the state's Department of Environmental Quality [9] used a decades-old siting act to minimize environmental damage along the route. TransCanada has rerouted more than 100 miles of the Keystone XL in response to agency and landowner concerns. If the pipeline is approved, the company also must post a bond so funds are available to repair construction-related damage.
DEQ staffer Greg Hallsten, who worked on Keystone XL siting, said that although TransCanada sometimes objected to the agency's reroutes, its complaints were overruled.
"We have [siting] authority in the state," he said. "Our authority's never been challenged along those lines."
TransCanada spokesman Terry Cunha said the vast differences in pipeline regulation reflect the political landscape of each state. "We appreciate that each state has their own guidelines," he said. "It's not up to us to modify or create legislation. We're working with the state governments to meet [their] guidelines and get this project approved."
Other states could follow Montana's lead by pressuring their legislators to create pipeline regulation, said Pat Parenteau, a Vermont Law School professor who studies land use and environmental policy. "If there's a popular enough demand," it can be done, he said.
That's what happened in Nebraska, where residents worked for years [10] to persuade their lawmakers to reroute the Keystone XL out of the ecologically sensitive Sandhills. Farmers and ranchers picketed the governor's mansion, traveled to Washington, D.C. and repeatedly called for a special session to draft siting regulations for interstate pipelines. As the momentum grew, TransCanada offered Nebraska a $100 million dollar spill bond [11] for the Sandhills region—a protection it didn't offer any of the other states.
Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman finally called a special session in November, where bills were passed [12] to move the pipeline out of the Sandhills and to give the Public Service Commission authority to site future oil pipelines (excluding Keystone XL). TransCanada is now working with state environmental officials to establish a new route for its pipeline.
What Nebraskans have done is very significant, said Mary Boyle, a spokeswoman for the nonpartisan watchdog group Common Cause [13]. Legislators won't act unless they feel outside pressure from cons uents, she said, so getting those bills passed is "no small accomplishment…Nebraska citizens clearly proved this can be done."
Few Protections from Eminent Domain
Despite the new regulations in Nebraska, landowners there, like landowners in all the Keystone states, have felt helpless when TransCanada used eminent domain to take their land.
All six states have given the company the power of eminent domain. While the eminent domain laws vary from state to state, they generally allow projects built for a "public" good—including railroads, transmission lines and highways—to use private land after paying landowners a fair price that's determined by the courts. But the laws aren't specific about what "public" means, and pipeline opponents say Keystone XL shouldn't be allowed to use eminent domain because it's not serving the United States public.
http://www.truth-out.org/print/11185
Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline is Not a Jobs Plan, But an Oil Export Plan
The Oil Goes to China, the Permanent Jobs Go to Canada, We Get the Spills, and the World Gets Warmer
You’ll hear the GOP, the American Petroleum Ins ute, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce make wild claims about the job creation potential of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Don’t be fooled. The pipeline company itself admits only “a few hundred permanent jobs” are created by Keystone XL.
The debate over whether Keystone XL creates jobs is a convenient diversion from something oil company backers don’t want you to know: this is an export pipeline to help them access foreign markets and bypass the United States. Oil companies will make bigger profits and oil prices for Americans will increase. That’s not a project that helps Americans. It’s a project that helps Big Oil.
The oil industry is pulling a bait and switch scam with Keystone XL – offering it as a path to economic and national security when the pipeline is mostly meant for export. According to the State Department, only 20 permanent jobs will be created by the pipeline. Even the pipeline company acknowledged that only “a few hundred permanent jobs’ will be created. Claims the pipeline will created 100,000 jobs are false. The U.S. State Department estimates no more than 6,000 temporary construction jobs will be created over the two years. We need better from Republicans when it comes to a jobs plan than a single project with jobs that won’t last.
While the debate over job creation from Keystone XL has attracted a lot of attention, long-term real job creation on which Americans depend is occurring in the clean energy industry. In just a six week period in September and October 2011, Environmental Entreprenuers, a national community of over 850 individual business leaders, identified the creation of 32,000 clean energy jobs by 100 companies including manufacturing plants, power generation project, renewable energy, and energy-efficiency retrofits.
More than 2.7 million people are working in the U.S. clean energy economy right now – more than the entire fossil fuel industry put together. Every month new clean energy jobs are announced that are shovel-ready and lead to long-lasting permanent job growth in America. Clean car manufacturers have created over 151,000 quality long term jobs in the United States while saving consumers billions of dollars at the pump. Between 2003 and 2010, the clean energy sector grew nearly twice as fast as the overall economy.
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/0...an-oil-export/
Oil Lobby Threatens Obama Over Keystone Pipeline: Here's Just How Much Financial Firepower the Industry Has in Washington
Only 10 of the 195 members of the House of Representatives who list the oil and gas industry among their top 20 contributors opposed the bill.
Here's a look at some of the oil and gas industry's favourite members of Congress as compiled by Maplight – all members of the $100,000 club, and all supporters of a bill to push Obama to pass the pipeline – along with some of their recent statements on the Keystone tar sands project.
http://www.alternet.org/environment/...paign=alternet
==========
UCA buying the legislators and legislation that enrich itself.
Obama has til 2/21 to decide
Just got a breaking new alert from Politico: Breaking News: Obama administration to formally reject permit for Keystone XL pipeline
he's offsetting/buying out the oilco opposition by opening huge vista of oceans for drilling.
opening soon: huge vista of oceans for drilling
slightly related: http://online.wsj.com/article/APa245...202b26bc1.html
exporting our energy independence, are we now?
our natural resources were never the property of Human-Americans.
UCA owns them all, and pays damn little royalties to extract them and sell to highest bidder.
XL Pipeline going to tax-free Gulf Coast to be close to central/south American markets. Public risk, private gain, as always.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...-pipeline.htmlPresident Barack Obama’s decision yesterday to reject a permit for TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL oil pipeline may prompt Canada to turn to China for oil exports.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in a telephone call yesterday, told Obama “Canada will continue to work to diversify its energy exports,” according to details provided by Harper’s office. Canadian Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver said relying less on the U.S. would help strengthen the country’s “financial security.”
The “decision by the Obama administration underlines the importance of diversifying and expanding our markets, including the growing Asian market,” Oliver told reporters in Ottawa.
sameCurrently, 99 percent of Canada’s crude exports go to the U.S., a figure that Harper wants to reduce in his bid to make Canada a “superpower” in global energy markets.
Canada accounts for more than 90 percent of all proven reserves outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, according to data compiled in the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Most of Canada’s crude is produced from oil-sands deposits in the landlocked province of Alberta, where output is expected to double over the next eight years, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
Harper “expressed his profound disappointment with the news,” according to the statement, which added that Obama told Harper the rejection was not based on the project’s merit and that the company is free to re-apply.
But from what I understand, it would take years to re-apply, and thus it won't happen.
To me, this is a dramatically dangerous decision.
I don't mean to imply that the ecological concerns are not enormous, but it would seem to me that the challenge would be to manage the ecological risks, rather than allowing all of that oil to go elsewhere.
I realize that this will be a profoundly unpopular position.
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