Canada pulls the plug on the U.S. Keystone Pipeline – will send oil to Asia

What a waste. Hard to think of a better trading partner than Canada.

This is what Obama wanted anyhow. He’s anti-colonial. He’s against the notion that any country, especially the US, should have power over others. So the US will keep siphoning money to those countries.

Will Obama ever make a decision that actually makes sense? It doesn’t seem likely. It will be a miracle if the US survives this community organizer who thought he could be president.

…yes, but the usual whiners are out to hold up Gateway via Native land claims and approvals
And there’s American money funding them.
Federal Liberal and NDP leaders have promised to kill Gateway.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/northern-gateway-decision/article19180594/

I victory for stupidity, inefficiency and anti-Westernism.
Well done obama.

The “Little o” does it one more time

poop spelling sucked
lol

The oil was never going to be used here anyway. We are already sending away our own fracking juice. Fine with me. Petrol prices remain the domain of the oil mafia.

Our Dear Leader continues the path outlined by Cloward and Piven: Weaken the USA by every method and means available. Then overwhelm it with every crises you can manufacture. Expand the welfare state… and then invite all of central and south america to come to the US to enjoy ‘the socialist democrat benefits’, no questions asked.
Think of it as ‘wealth redistribution’, the Obama way…..

Oil is in demand. If China gets it from Canada, it will be produced and transported in as environmentally sound a fashion as can be done. If Northern Gateway is not built, China will be in touch with its friend Vladimir Putin, and tell him it needs crude. Putin will say ‘SURE!!’ and eventually will drill the Arctic seabed in order to supply. Now THAT is an environmental nightmare remeniscent of the BP blowout in the Gulf but in the frozen Arctic with no resources at hand.
Stalling or cancelling on Keystone is, of course, extreme posturing. Much of the damn pipeline is already or almost in place, and will eventually start carrying oil. O needs to suck on the environmental left FIRST to secure the next election for his party and friends. In fact, there is the Northern Gateway project, but there is also another pipeline in process to the west coast as well. Kinder Morgan operates an existing pipeline from Alberta to Vancouver and is in the process of jumping through the environmental hoops to triple its capacity.
It is, however, very true that much American money is being funnelled into the Canadian arms of Sierra Club, WWF, Greenpeace ..etc.. to fund activities to block both pipelines plus Keystone. This has been documented by Canadian journalist Vivian Krause ( read about it on her website [.http://fairquestions.typepad.com/rethink_campaigns/%5D. It wont be an easy fight for either side and the green strategy is to stall the approvals and construction until the next Canadian federal election (October, 2015). If the old Liberal party gets in, you’ll see the pipelines complete but a few years down the road after they have sucked in the Green vote.

You take a guy from Indonesia with no experience, no accomplishments, and average intelligence and put him in the White House, then you expect leadership?
Time to give Biden a chance.

The Greens will only be happy when they have driven the economy back into medieval times.
Presumably the mass starvation, huge increase in disease and freezing to death of people, is a price worth paying to “save the planet”!

Oh!Bummer! for the LOSE!

Haha.. love it!
Wouldn’t surprise me if Tony Abbott suggested it in passing. In any case, Canada jot got fed up with Obama’s head up his own unscientific chocolate starfish.

From what I can gather from the original source, the US Keystone pipeline is still a very real possibility, so I think this post is misleading (especially if you consider the economic competiveness of each proposal). I remember a similar tactic used by mining companies in Australia, saying that if taxes were too high, they’d move to Canada. Of course, if you actually look at the numbers, the Canadian option was a drop in the ocean compared to reality (about 10 fold in production). Same case here probably.
XL Door still wide open for Obama….or the next president.

Does this increase the risks of the US invading any oil-rich dictatorships before 2016??

I expect that approval for Keystone might be given after next years elections. I would be very surprised if there is a shovel in the ground on Gateway before then. There are times when I wish our Government would copy India, and look at all the foreign money that is being pumped into our country to restrict development, with an eye of pursuing criminal charges.
The west/east pipeline will likely be in operation long before that.
In the seventies we built a pipeline to carry oil-sand oil to the east coast. When OPEC crashed the prices, the flow was reversed and it was used to carry cheaper mid-east oil from tankers to the west. Approval has been given for it to reverse flow once again and after a certain amount of refurbishment, to start carrying oil to the east again.
Many Canadian’s wish they’d build a proper refinery in Alberta itself, instead of just shipping our raw natural resources out of the country to have value added via refining. Problem is, they’d still be stuck shipping all those finished products to markets thousands of miles away.

Not so fast:
1. Keystone XL is still a desired option and is ready to begin if the Americans make up their mind. The Northern Gateway is just a separate means of selling oil to other customers. The approval of Northern Gateway does not preclude Keystone XL.
2. If the Liberal Party of Canada form the next government in next years federal election, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau has promised to scrap the Northern Gateway Pipeline….although he then said that he approved of selling oil to Asia, but didn’t say how it was to get there. Was Justin playing politics to gain the support of the voters that opposed Northern Gateway or was he being his usual obtuse self?
One can expect that millions of dollars from Middle Eastern and Russian official sources will continue to be invested in the propaganda of various Environmental groups (such as the The Tides Foundation) that oppose the Oil Sands, Northern Gateway and Keystone XL.
Has there been an article or two posted here about the foreign investment in the Environmental lobby to undermine the economies of North America?

Eric, it’s really not that simple. The plan always was for Keystone AND the Gateway to be built. We have a LOT of petroleum in Alberta – something like 3.5 to 4 Trillion barrels. The current estimate of oil recoverable economically using today’s tech is 180 billion barrels, which is a 4900 YEAR supply at current extraction, 500 year at the planned rate.
Pretty surprising numbers for the “peak oil” crowd, many that I talk to simply can’t wrap their heads around the numbers and think they’re somehow fabricated. The numbers are real.
Keystone or it’s successor WILL eventually be built, the moment the democrats are kicked to the curb.
China’s 40 billion, while a gigantic number, is still just the proverbial drop in the ocean compared to the real money going into the Sands. There are a lot of people here complaining that China is getting too big a piece of the action, but I hardly think so.
Also, Alberta is currently going through somewhat of a government crisis, when it was revealed that the currently In-Power “Progressive Conservatives” have completely ignored the second word and are calling themselves the first. We recently hounded our Premier right out of office and they already had one incident of completely screwing up the oil industry by demanding “fair share” on royalties.

There is no guarantee that the Northern Gateway pipeline will be built. it has gained approval with conditions from the Canadian Federal government. However the pipeline takes oil from Alberta to a port in British Columbia. The BC government has not yet given its approval and is demanding much higher compensation than Alberta wants to give. as well, there is a legal obligation to “consult” with the First Nations (aboriginals) along teh path. The duty to consult came from a Supreme Court ruling but as yet no one knows just what the duty to consult really means. So any decision on this is, with any sense of reality, going back to the courts for litigation.

Part of the NAFTA agreement is that Canada is compelled to “share” its oil and other resources with the US. So in the case of an oil shortage, Canada is compelled to ship oil to the US.
I’ve hear many right and left wing Americans whine about NAFTA. Actually it is a pretty good deal for the US. Canada got access to US markets by becoming absolutely economically dependent on it.

And the price of gasoline at the pumps at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave remain at 0.00 and 00/10!

I doubt the Enbridge pipeline to the west coast will ever be built. If it is completed, it will be under another company’s project. Keystone will probably be done under another President. The most sensible pipeline project for Canada is Energy East. Feed light oil to Canadian refineries and some heavy oil for export from the east coast.

Yeah, but first, we have to reverse the years of bribes paid to “First Nations” groups along the proposed pipeline route, by the green money laundering machine, AKA Greenpeace, Suzuki, Moore, Hewlett, Packard, Tides et al.

I also remember the dramatic cessation of anti-logging activity by the well-organized rowdy left, when Canada’s McMillan Bloedel forestry company was acquired by Weyerhauser, from the USA. Instantly, they all went home. Once the USA get their guaranteed access to Canadian supply, the Asian supply route will be dead.

Mac the Knife says:
June 28, 2014 at 11:44 pm
“Think of it as ‘wealth redistribution’, the Obama way…..”
——————–
I think of it as, ….. the Obama way … for the Muslim Islamic fanatics to defeat and destroy the Western world infidels without “firing a shot”.
===========
TBear says:
June 29, 2014 at 3:31 am
“Unbelievable stupidity of Obama. Is he really intent on destroying the USA?”
———————-
“Yes”, he is.
His claim to “Fundamentally change America” is his one (1) and only pre-Election promise that he is intent on and committed to insuring that it happens.

Feckless. Unfaithful. Disloyal. Deceitful. Irresolute. Immature. Extremist. Failure. Self-Absorbed. Corrupt. Out of touch. So many ways to describe our President.

I’d strongly question the interpretation of this news.
First, there is ample supply potential in Alberta to fill both a pipeline to the west coast and another pipeline south across the USA. They’re also talking about a pipeline east across Canada to the Atlantic coast. It’s not an either-or issue. All of these pipelines could potentially be built and filled with oil.
Second, Keystone XL is not all about supplying the USA with more crude oil. It’s at least partly about finding another export route for Canadian crude oil via the US gulf coast ports. US crude generally can’t be legally exported (other than within NAFTA), but Canadian crude can.
Third, the USA is not short of crude oil at the moment. In the areas that would be reached by Keystone XL, there is the opposite problem. A huge glut of crude has depressed prices at the key Cushing OK market since 2010. After massive efforts to find ways to transport the excess to somewhere it can be refined, by reversing existing pipelines, converting gas pipelines to oil pipelines, building new pipelines and putting oil on rail, the industry has succeeded in moving some of the glut away from the midcontinent and down to the Gulf Coast. But even there, refiners are struggling to use it all, and there is serious speculation in the international trading community that the USA may start to allow some exports of unrefined material.
The USA is now making more gasoline than it can consume itself, and has become a net exporter in the past few years – an astonishing turn around for European refiners who have seen the USA as a reliable buyer of their excess production for decades. So even if Canada’s crude does head to China, it won’t make a jot of difference to the US supply of gasoline, or the price at the pumps.

The oil will move by train.
“Shipments of oil by rail from Western Canada are expected to more than triple in the next two years, as the sector heads into a severe shortage of pipeline capacity by next year, according to a new forecast by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
Oil transportation by rail is expected to jump to about 700,000 barrels per day by 2016 from 200,000 bpd in late 2013”
http://business.financialpost.com/2014/06/09/canadas-oil-industry-cuts-long-term-production-growth-forecast-to-4-8m-bpd/?__lsa=ce2a-e189

Between 2015 and 2025, (11 construction seasons) I expect all four projects to be completed.
The big caveat from the Canadian side – a change in Federal government.
Trans Mountain expansion
http://www.transmountain.com/
Energy East to Quebec and New Brunswick
http://www.transcanada.com/energy-east-pipeline.html
Northern Gateway – in some form
http://www.gatewayfacts.ca/
And finishing the Keystone XL.
Need a new President, ideally Republican.
http://keystone-xl.com/

Lee Leeman says:
June 28, 2014 at 11:49 pm
It is, however, very true that much American money is being funnelled into the Canadian arms of Sierra Club, WWF, Greenpeace ..etc.. to fund activities to block both pipelines plus Keystone. This has been documented by Canadian journalist Vivian Krause ( read about it on her website [.http://fairquestions.typepad.com/rethink_campaigns/%5D.

Vivian Krause is excellent. She’s a single mother and researcher who works out of her kitchen in Vancouver, a former UN employee and environmentalist. Everybody in B.C. is an environmentalist; they’re born that way, it’s God’s country. But she’s a killer when it comes to reading the fine print on tax returns and in grants. She is the one who uncovered that Bill McKibben’s 350.org was funded by the Rockefellers to the tune of $10 million from inception through its various organizations, and forced him to own up to part of it on his website.
Canadians on this board will appreciate this local Vancouver interview. American charities are attempting to get 40% of Canada’s wilderness areas declared off limits to Canadian development; ‘natch the areas are where Canada’s greatest resources are located. The question is why?

At this point the odds of the Northern Gateway project being completed are probably less than Keystone. Barely seen (if at all) in this entire thread is the fact the Gateway project would pass through a fairly large number of aboriginal lands, whose peoples’ rights to consultation and accommodation have just been boosted by an important decision of the Supreme Court of Canada:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/globe-politics-insider/ruling-should-remind-ottawa-of-unfinished-business-with-first-nations/article19362935/#dashboard/follows/
From media reports, the opposition in Canada to the Northern Gateway is far more visceral and deeply felt than what has been seen towards Keystone by Green or Democratic forces in the U.S. Look for dangerous blockades and armed standoffs if the Canadian government attempts to push this through. The Harper government knows this, and deliberately downplayed the decision to approve.

canada needs to take a lesson from india. NGO’s like tides canada are largely US funded entities that use green policies to hurt the canadian economy to the benefit of their US backers. the end result is US investors get to buy up canadian assets at fire sale prices, using profits from inflated US prices due to restricted competition from canadian suppliers. the mac blo takeover showed how it could be done.
foreign backed NGO’s are engaged in economic treason within canada and should be dealt with by the full force of the law. as we used to say, hangings too good for them.

Robert of Ottawa says:
June 29, 2014 at 7:29 am
Again, it’s “oil sands”. Nature’s largest oil spill on the planet that Canadians are cleaning up.

Exactly. Mother Nature’s Oil Spill. No different than what BP did to the beaches of Florida, only massively bigger.
To see before-and-after pictures of Alberta’s land reclamation laws in effect; http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/reclaiming-albertas-oil-sands-mines
Some of the oil companies have to stay, contractually, at least 15 years after a ‘mine’ is exhausted (meaning all the oil is extracted by steam from the charcoal-colored sand) to ensure that the land reclamation plan they drew up and that was approved by the Province before they started is completed properly. Under penally of fine and possible jail.

Allan M.R. MacRae on June 29, 2014 at 7:50 am
Allan I live near that area and having an oil pipeline from Terrace to Prince Rupert would be a disaster in waiting because of the topography. This is a steep mountainous area which is prone to slides with a major river. Have a look.
There is a natural gas pipeline running down this valley and has been damaged numerous times by slides.
The Douglas channel out of Kitimat has had heavy shipping for decade’s with no incidents that I can find.
The channels navigation aides are being upgraded along with real-time traffic control. The tankers double hulled, inspected, two pilots and escorted by two tugs, one tethered.

Rud Istvan says:
June 29, 2014 at 7:38 am
Why are the reserves growing?
http://statshb.capp.ca/SHB/Sheet.asp?SectionID=2&SheetID=318
Incidentally, don’t they have to dilute the bitumen to put it in pipelines; hence: dilbit?

Northern Gateway will not happen for many many years. Liberal’s and NDP have stated they will can it, and the Natives in Canada just won a Supreme Court of Canada ruling basically giving the say whether anything happens on their land, and they will say no. Keystone will be built long before Northern Gateway.

The ongoing confusion at all levels between oil and tar is amazing, walk out to your car, open your hood and pull out the dipstick, the stuff that drips off is oil, the driveway it falls on is tar (asphalt=tar plus sand and gravel). If you can not tell your dipstick from your driveway, you should refrain from pointing it out to others. Tar is a man made byproduct of coal and oil processing, once all the lighter distillates are gone, no one would put up with northern Alberta’s brutal winters or fly infested summers to get tar.

Doesn’t change a thing. News flash boys and girls; the damned oil is already flowing, and being transported by rail. And since those tank cars are all brand spankin’ shiny and new, we can expect that any pipeline construction, Gateway or Keystone, will be delayed until these tank cars are worn out, or have been in service long enough to have produced a decent return on some filthy stinkin’ rich guy’s investment.

Keystone is not dead.
We are still working on land titles and crossings right up to the U.S. border.
Obama may just be stalling until the next election

Please, Oh Canada, do not let obama win this one. We need each other for the long term. Help us defeat obama the destroyer.

Well if the story is from Breitbart it must be true. I remember their awesome reporting of Paul Krugman going bankrupt and their great investigation into Friends of Hamas. I would put the credibility of Breitbart right up there with The Onion and The Daily Currant.
I like WattsUpWithThat but referencing Breitbart? We criticize alarmists for being gullible, let’s not join them.

Taking oil by rail, good. Tanker trucking, good. Just remember the new right given to natives in BC also include oceans. All they have to do to prove title is to have canoed on it at some point in time before europeans came.

Keystone is not dead by any means. A republican win in the next election could lead to approval and construction in a heart beat. Northern gateway faces too many hurtles ie natives etc. meanwhile look for vast increases in train transport and it’s inherent problems.

Nigel Harris says:
June 29, 2014 at 7:03 am
I’d strongly question the interpretation of this news…Second, Keystone XL is not all about supplying the USA with more crude oil. It’s at least partly about finding another export route for Canadian crude oil via the US gulf coast ports. US crude generally can’t be legally exported (other than within NAFTA), but Canadian crude can.
————————————————————–
Does that mean the oil Buffet’s trains are hauling is currently being exported from the Gulf Coast?
cn

in the category of “hanging is too good for them – unless it is by the nuts”
First Nations chief received $55,000 from Tides Foundation …
http://www.torontosun.com/2014/01/17/first-nations-chief-received-55000-from-tides-foundation
Jan 18, 2014 – A left-wing lobby group in San Francisco wired $55,000 to the bank account of an Indian chief in Northern Alberta, paying him to oppose the oilsands.
And sure enough, that chief – Allan Adam, from the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation – earned his money. Last weekend, he flew to Toronto to sit on a stage next to Neil Young, the folk singer who was in town to demonize Canada’s oil industry.
Now, $55,000 might sound like a lot of money to pay, just to rent a politician for a day if all the chief did for his money was to appear on stage in Toronto beside Neil Young. But to the Tides Foundation, it’s well worth it. Think of Adam as an actor, hired to play a part in an elaborate theatrical production.
Neil Young had his role: he’s the American celebrity who can draw crowds of fawning Baby Boomer journalists. But at the end of the day, he’s just another millionaire celebrity. When he talks about the oilsands, he quickly reveals himself as a low-information know-nothing.
Adam brings what Young can’t: authenticity. Young likes to wear an Indian-style leather vest, but Adam really is an Indian, and he really lives near the oilsands.
Adam didn’t do a lot of talking in Toronto. He was more of a prop than an actor. See, the Tides Foundation is from San Francisco. And Neil Young lives on a 1,500-acre estate near San Francisco. Without Adam, this would have just been some California millionaires coming up here to boss Canadians around. That’s why they had to hire Adam, to aboriginalize their attack on Canada. It was political sleight of hand, to distract from the fact that this was a foreign assault on Canadian jobs.
Tides could have hired an actual actor, like maybe Lorne Cardinal, who played the Aboriginal policeman in the comedy series Corner Gas. But they didn’t hire an actor. They hired an elected public official. That’s the problem.
Adam’s official title is “chief.” But it’s not a religious or cultural title. Under the Indian Act, that’s just the legal title given to the elected mayor of an Indian Band.
The Tides Foundation put $55,000 into the bank account of a mayor to get him to take a particular political position. Depending on what Tides was getting the Chief to do, the payment might well have been a bribe. But we won’t know, because no one is talking about the $55,000 payment.
How is it acceptable that a foreign lobby group can simply deposit cash into a bank account of a Canadian politician? Who else is being paid cash to oppose the oilsands?

“Obama’s inability to make a decision on Keystone has finally yielded a result – Canada has made the decision for him.”
Inability to make a decision?!?! Obama made the decision in January 2012.

Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
This makes me so mad, I could chew nails. Tens of thousands of good jobs lost, a needed economic boost from cheap oil thrown away. Heckuva job, Greens.

Reblogged this on News You May Have Missed and commented:
Canada pulls the plug on the U.S. Keystone Pipeline – will send oil to Asia

See a lot of gloom and doom in reference to the British Columbia recent treaty in reference to Enbridge. First, this treaty is not even close to the pipeline route. Two, the majority of Canada has treaties and have for 100 plus years. Here in Fort McMurray we are very familiar with treaty natives and have agreements in place – for instance our workforce has agreements that natives to supply 10% of the workforce in the sands. We also build community schools, community halls, and so on. In essence all business needs to know is surety. In other words, who do we negotiate with. Which means this British Columbia treaty only make the process easier as opposed to before where the ownership of said land was in limbo.
Next – we produce OIL from bitumen. NOT TAR! I know that is extremely difficult for illiterates and watermelons to grasp.
Oil – yes, we have enough production to do the Canada east/west route, and the Keystone when it eventually gets approval. And it will.
The US – here in Alberta there is a sense of deep disappointment and quite anger at this US government. For the first time since 1812-1814 we are treated as enemies of this administration. NOT the American people, the US government. Not only the Keystone is in jeopardy, but also a realization that Canada itself must chart a new course for itself in the world. Consequently, the billions involved with the F-35 fighter jet purchase is also in severe question in this country. We are now looking to Europe and beyond – and I for one am pushing for European fighter jet purchase, along with other military purchases costing US jobs and billion of dollars lost. Moreover, we are clamping down on any fresh water, and we have 20% of the world’s fresh water in this nation. Canada is no longer the little buddy next door – the Keystone saga finally woke us up to our own possibilities as a nation. As anyone here knows nations have no friends – we only have interests. Indeed, this has been quite the learning experience for Canada as a whole.

Ferd, Neil Young is a Canadian and “a Southern man don’t need him around anyhow.”

“After what happened in Quebec, how is this safer than a brand new, state of the art pipeline built to the highest standards in history?”
But that’s what the ‘Greens’ want. A few oil train crashes burning down towns, and they’ll be shouting in the media about how dangerous oil trains are and how they must be banned.
The left’s standard policy for the last century has been to create problems and then exploit them to push their true agenda. This is no different. The last thing they want is safe oil transport.

Boydo3 N. Albany says: June 28, 2014 at 11:22 pm
The oil was never going to be used here anyway. We are already sending away our own fracking juice. Fine with me. Petrol prices remain the domain of the oil mafia.
Wake up. Oil exports from the US are banned and have been so for 40 years. Two (2) permits were allowed a week ago.
The Canadian oil was coming to us at half the price. The Middle East terrorist cartels and OPEC does not rule all the oil prices.

I would like to add 2 points to this discussion.
Firstly, Harper warned a long time ago that if America didn’t want our product, we would sell it elsewhere. Anyone paying attention is aware of this.
Secondly, there are oil sands in Saskatchewan that rival or are greater than the Alberta deposit. That, coupled with the Bakken deposit, there is a lot of oil here.
Obama can go ahead and spend vast amounts of money stopping ISIS to preserve the flow of blood oil, or he can get cheaper, safer, non-conflict oil from Canada. Seems like a no brainer.
I won’t say what I think of the current US administration. But it is quaint that the mentally handicapped can reach such lofty positions of power in America.

David Ball, why would Obama spend money trying to stop ISIS when he had them trained?
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/06/20/the-u-s-trained-terrorist-group-isis-in-2012/

Gregory says:
June 29, 2014 at 12:17 pm
History repeats itself once again. Sad that we don’t learn from previous mistakes.

“The Canadian oil will still be burnt – in Asia, instead of America.”
Yes, exactly as Obama wants. Truthfully, he cares nothing carbon dioxide “pollution”. The whole global warming issue is his means of screwing up energy delivery to people of this country. Based on his actions, he cares nothing for this country or its people.
He promised to fundamentally change America, and that is the only promise he is fulfilling. By skyrocketing debt, alienating friendly nations, emboldening unfriendly nations, allowing Iran to become nuclear, opening borders, making a mess of health care insurance, having his guard dogs at the EPA make rules that will eventually cause a radical increase energy prices, banning drilling offshore and in some two million western acres, etc, etc, etc, this country will be not be the America in which we grew up.

@David Ball says
“Secondly, there are oil sands in Saskatchewan that rival or are greater than the Alberta deposit. That, coupled with the Bakken deposit, there is a lot of oil here. ”
Please quantify and substantiate the above
If you listen to the Hofmeister link I posted above at about 16 min, he says
“lots and lots is a political science term. You may know them differently as technologists” :: ))
Best Regards
brent

Canada pulls the plug on the U.S. Keystone Pipeline – will send oil to Asia

This is one of the easiest predictions I have ever made. You don’t need to be an Einstein to know what was going to happen. Even without Asia there are many, many countries who want and need oil.

Keystone’s biggest problem right now appears to be Nebraska, which has to provide a route for the pipeline but has no oilfields of its own along that route. Nebraska gets the risk of spills but gets nothing in return. Far better to build along the route of existing pipelines from Montana to Colorado and expand those popelines. A pipeline there not only accesses the Bakken Field but the Niobrara and Wattenberg oilfields (also being developed via frakking) and then into the Texas popeline network via the Andarko and Permian Basins. It looks to me like Trans-Canada had a tin ear when it came to US politics. They looked at the US map and all they saw was a belt of Red or near-Red states across the Great Plains and Colorado and Montana tending “purple”. And they didn’t want to work with any other pipeline company. Now they are having to work with another pipeline company to get some oil across Illinois and Missouri to Cushing OK and the Colorado plains are tending so “red” that their elected officials explored leaving Coloardo and creating their own state. The most the Greens can muster in Colorado is support for letting communities like Longmont and Ft. Collins say no to frakking under their cities. Colorado is NOT saying no to the Wattenberg Field.
And there is another alternative to Northern Gateway if the First Nations keep blocking it. A railway has been proposed from Alberta to Alaska. If British Columbia proves totally uncooperative, it (or a pipeline or both) can be built north from Hay River to Norman Wells thence over the Canol Route into the Yukon before crossing the border either past Dawson or backtracking a bit to the Tanana Valley. Thence to the Alaska Pipeline and the underutilized Port of Valdez to Asia. The Yukon and Northwest Territory First Nations are far fewer and far less “Green” than British Columbia First Nations.
And then there are even more alternatives: A trans-Canada Pipeline to Nova Scotia. A pipeline to Churchill, Manitoba along the railroad that is already starting to ship crude (only open 5 months of the year, so far, but extendable with better icebreakers) and simply building refineries in Alberta and shipping refined products by truck and rail, from gasoline to plastics resins. Build the same infrastructure in Alberta that we see in Texas and Louisiana, which will mean more jobs for Canadians. The US CANNOT say no to refined products and petrochemicals without completely agrogating NAFTA. One way or another, that oil will get used.

At Crosspatch. Where were you when Bush started a war that cost us trillions? How you guys can compare a lost pipeline to 10 years of war is beyond me.

And for further confusion, there are at least two proposed natural gas pipeline projects to the north coast of BC. Those would take natural gas from NE BC, tapping into pipeline(s) that already run from NE BC past Prince George to the lower mainland of BC and onward to the US.
(Terminus of the various oil and gas pipelines are Kitimat (which is at the end of an inlet thus protected) and Prince Rupert (which already has a cargo port). Both already have natural gas supply by pipeline, for local consumption, the main line of that supply may have been twinned.)
Many of the existing pipelines go back several decades – circa 1963 I worked on the NG pipeline from NE BC., the TransMountain oil pipeline may date to 1969.

As others have pointed out the two projects are not related at all.
Imagine that the Canadian government was actually using the approval of one project as a bargaining chip for the other. Enbridge would have a case against the government for all the preliminary fees it’s paid and applications it’s submitted – this would be a huge liability for the government in the tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars. There’s also the public embarrassment of the government caused by such unethical behaviour.

Venezual, according to the CIA factbook – has elections.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ve.html
Probably more transparent that the “black box” elections conducted in the U.S. dictatorship.
I live under the oppressive boot of the U.S.. I don’t like it. I want it to end.
Get your military bases out of my country, now. Thanks.

Frank – what are you talking about? It was ALL OVER THE NEWS in Canada last week.

“The oil was never going to be used here anyway. We are already sending away our own fracking juice. Fine with me. Petrol prices remain the domain of the oil mafia.” Try learning a few minimal basic facts. The oil is already being used here. However it is being shipped by rail on Warren Buffet’s trains. And he is profitting $5 per bbl. on it. Keystone just takes it off his trains.

In opposing economic growth and growth of energy infrastructure the greens are trying to erect a barbed wire fence around the human race.
They dont get it that economic growth reduces population growth eventually to below replacement and leads a cleaner environment through better technology.
Its driven by subconscious racist anxiety about countries that our parents taught us were inhabited by grass-skirted savages achieving economic and technical parity with a disappearing “west”.

Plug? I didn’t read about a plug being pulled, just that there was a second pipeline being built. They’ll probably still push for and use XL if it does get built. And the sourthern XL portion is already done.

Er, folks, the oil in the proposed Keystone pipeline was never meant for US-consumption. Yes, our refineries in NE and TX would get some business but the oil was and is slated for export.

Obama will approve Keystone after the mid-term elections. He can’t afford to before as pipeline opponents are some of the Democratic Party’s hardest workers. After the election, when the useful idiots cease to be useful, he will approve it. I’m sure he’s let the Canadian government know what he plans.

brent says:
June 29, 2014 at 1:12 pm
Look it up yourself. As Willis says, I’m not doing your homework for you. Thankfully, you can no longer get misinformation from “the oil drum”.

A major problem with Trans-Canada pipelines is its dishonesty in using the legal doctrine of “eminent domain”.
That’s an immoral process that violates individual property rights for some claimed common good, but even if it were valid it has been widely abused. (That’s what happends when you give the collective power to initiate force. The Kelo case fought by the Institute of Justice, http://www.ij.org, publicized the process.)
Trans-Canada’s use of that process is one reason their XL expansion of the Keystone pipeline has been blocked.

Here’s the situation as I understand it:
– The Canadian government approved the Enbridge Northern Gateway project on June 14th.
– TransCanada has not withdrawn its request that the US Administration approve the cross-border segment of Keystone XL.
– The Enbridge pipeline will have to cross First Nations territories to the west, as well as the province of British Columbia. Neither has been a proponent of the project, and approval is not at all guaranteed.
– US gasoline prices are Brent-linked, that is, the international benchmark price based on the output of the UK/Norway North Sea. US gasoline prices are linked to neither WTI (the US benchmark West Texas Intermediate) nor WCS (Western Canadian Select, the Alberta benchmark price). Therefore, neither the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, nor the failure to do so, is likely to materially influence retail gasoline prices in the US.
– Lifting the US crude export ban could reduce US gasoline prices. US refineries are primarily geared to process heavy crude, that is, crude from places like Canada, Venezuela and Mexico. Shale oil is very light, and not the right fit for Gulf Coast refineries. Therefore, lifting the crude export ban (of which we see small steps forward recently), would allow light and heavy crude to be processed where it can be done so most efficiently, and this could have the effect of reducing US gasoline prices modestly (Yergin says by up to 8 cents a gallon; figure half that in reality).
While I support the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, I find this article to be materially misleading, and it should be modified accordingly.

Keith, you are correct and that was my point. The US refineries would get business refining the tar sands crude into various products but the product will be exported. I was responding to many of the comments here that incorrectly assumed that the products would be consumed in the United States.

by pipeline or by rail going south, north, east or west the Oil Sands oil will get to market. our civilization isn’t powered by happy Green Unicorn farts

With respect, those are two very different and not mutually exclusive projects. This article misrepresents the impact that Gateway will have on the Keystone pipeline.

Good luck getting that pipeline through liberal land British Columbia. Those green liberals hate oil as much as Comrade Obamaski hate coal. There will be a new President in the White House long before that pipeline’s construction permits are ever issued. When all is said and done, a new Republican president will sign the pipeline’s construction permits.

Can’t blame Canada at all. They gave the U.S. every opportunity to access this oil and only Obama is to blame!

@Beta Blocker
Some for example labour movement in Alberta will from time to time ask why don’t they upgrade more in Alberta and ship product to add more value locally.
One might be able to make a case to ship product to Asia rather than feedstock.
However for the Canada US trade, what I see at present is that USA has more than adequate refining capacity, and in fact US exports of product are going up
So if one already has adequate refining capacity in a region why build more?
Remember that many of the companies operating In Canada are affiliated with the majors. For example Imperial oil is 70% owned by Exxon. Exxon and Imperial oil are both involved in oilsands. Why would they want to build a major heavy crude refinery in Alberta to export product into a market in competition with their own refineries.
It is not capital efficient to build “excess” refining capacity, and these big companies think globally in their capital allocation processes.

KokoofKanada@1:03
Fortunately, it’s not up to the province. Pipelines fall under federal jurisdiction, so a straight NIMBY by the province will not work. The bigger risk is in dealing with each of the independent Indian bands. Most of them have no treaties (unlike on the prairies) so each will line up for what they think is “fair”. Many of the reserves in that area, where I grew up, have no idea what makes a functioning economy. That’s why I’m now an Albertan – I went to a place in Canada where I could use my skills, work, and prosper. The reserves back around “home” are content to make sure that nothing gets developed unless they get “their share” on the basis of them being here before us, and our ancestors not being willing to countenance a genocide. Once the chiefs are promised a share that they think is sufficient (and that they think is bigger than the other chiefs will get – expect a lot of confidentiality demands on the parts of the reservations), the pipeline will have no problems.
(general comments follow)
I’m not mining oil at the moment, but know enough about the area to know that the oil miners aren’t too worried about how the product will get to market. Given the money already in play, the Oilsands output will likely double within 15 years. Pipelines or rail or trucks, there are lots of ways to move the product. There is a multi-tiered royalty set-up in Alberta that gives the province some money based upon how much is mined, but even more based on the profits of what is mined. This gives the province a vested interest is spurring development – that’s even the purpose of the Alberta government’s AER – Alberta Energy Regulator – mandated to maximize extraction of energy resources as part of the licencing process. There is also a lot more oil there than are listed on any statement of resources – the listed levels of geologic certainty for any statement of resources is dependent upon drill spacing and complexity of the deposit. If you already have 50 years worth of mining planned in your reserves then why spend the money drilling to expand your resource base now? Underground oil will probably be different, but in surface mining it’s common that the minable reserves are around 30% of the resources (the difference between what is conceptually recoverable, and what the mine plan can develop). As long as you can keep the lease and have enough holes to know that there’s something there, you’re good.
Particularly rich beds of bitumen come out of the ground like an area of beach sand that has had a crankcase emptied onto it – I remember the augers gleaming and running like thin molasses in the -30 dawn while we were sampling. I also remember how the not-so-rich areas did act like pavement – the augers were rejected, and the split spoon wouldn’t penetrate more than an inch after 50 reps with the hammer. The host material varied from a clean sand to what acted like bitumen impregnated till (with silt and/or clay as the matrix). We could tell the depth to the bitumen by the height of the pine trees: once the taproot hit the surface of the oil, the tree died. All run-off water from the swamp had a rainbow tinge naturally. If the water had passed through our dewatering pumps it had to be treated as hazardous waste unless it found a way back under the surface of the ground. The Oilsands really are a huge natural oil spill, and they have been draining into the Athabasca River and up to the Arctic Ocean for over 1000 years. Judging by some bitumen contaminated gravel beds we found, they’ve been more likely cut by rivers for the last 100,000 years. To me, opposition to mining the Oilsands really shows the watermelon leanings of some groups – they’re perfectly all right with leaving the area a poisonous wasteland with little biodiversity if the alternative is someone else making a profit.

Tar sands oil is very thick, as is Venezuelan oil. There are only a few refineries that can handle that feedstock, most being on the Gulf coast. I don’t think Keystone ever was strictly to reduce gasoline prices here in the US.

Thank an environmentalist for the loss of good paying skilled labor jobs. Every union that supported Obama should be proud of themselves for cutting their own economic throats.