Texases: I fully agree. A map of the US and Canada shows a spiderweb of pipelines, the safest way to transport liquids or gasses. Pennwell and Gulf Publishing would be hapopy to sell you some.
The pipeline company has already agreed with the state of Nebraska to reroute the line to less sensitive areas which Nebraska will accept. The scaremongers are enjoying their day in the sun while spouting twisted facts, outright lies and halftruths. Rbert Redford is now an “expert” on global warming and emissions!!
The power of propaganda should not be underestimated. Years ago when West Germany wanted to build a nuclear power plant and there was almost violent opposition from an “environmental” group financed by …the East German Goverment which at that time itself was building a nuclear power plant a few miles from the border with West Germany!!! Any protest there would have resulted in instant incarceration !
Green Peace, the “environmental” group is very active in China, of all places. The goverment gives them money to protest. However, they are not allowed to protest against anything in China (jail terms for that); they are protesting against the USA on Chinese TV and the media. Several governments have now taken away Green Peace’s tax free status since it is no longer considered a charity. New Zealand has branded Green Peace an eco-terroist organization.
The three key issues in the XL pipeline are 1) Obama’s limp response to approval since he wants the enviro groups as well as the unions on his side in trying to get re-elected. The next major source of opposition are 2) energy user firms now enjoying deeply discounted Canadian crude from oilsands, which they want to keep discounted. Unrestricted flow of oil into the major US refining centers would command a higher price for this crude oil. These firms do no personally intervene, they give money to so-called enviro groups.The final opposition to the pipleline are 3) well financed enviro groups who want all oilsands development stopped. These same folks want to stop a Canadian pipeline to the West coast from which the oil would be exported to Asia for the same “reasons”. They are currerently in Vancouver putting on a face of “honest outrage” in panning the pipeline. Most of these persons have made it a career to be against anything, since the citizens as a group keep giving money to envronmental groups.
As any posters from Texas and Oklahoma know, the oil and gas industry has been around for a very long time and benefited citizens of North America immensely.
It’s unfortunate that the XL pipeline has become a political football in the US federal election.
The dogma from the left and dogma from the right overwhelms rational debate and we find ourselves falling further and further behind. Politics at its finest.
Yes Rod; I watched the candidates debate and had to keep pinching myself as a reminder I was not dreaming some Alice in Wonderland scene.
No candidate had a full grasp as to what was really at stake, or if they knew they were deliberately twisting things to say what they thought their constituants wanted to hear. No platfrom was viable or of overall long term benefit to the American public. It’s degerating into “government by Nielson ratings”, and will give real meaning to the original Greek meaning of democracy which means “mob rule”.
When a country’s debt reaches 100% of its gross domestic product, the room to maneuver is greatly reduced.
Remember the song “Sixteen Tons” which ends with “St. Peter don’t call me for I can’t go; I owe my soul to the company store”. The company store is unfortuantely now run by China and other wealthy countries.
The US at this time needs a leader of the calibur of Ronald Reagan, Winston Churchill or Margaret Thatcher.
Those three people are not very good examples…Churchill had the ability to maintain order and discipline during the war but he and Roosevelt gave away the farm at Yalta…
Reagan and Thatcher both knew how to make the tribe feel good about itself but accomplished very little in concrete terms…
The oil pipeline from Canada, the subject of this thread, will make people who invested in Suncor a few years ago a LOT of money and turn Alberta into a strip-mined wasteland…When oil moves from $100/barrel to $200/barrel, there will be almost no limit on the measures used to find more of it…
We have picked all the low-hanging fruit. Now we are going after the upper branches and it’s going to be very destructive and very expensive…
Two questions: Do we have the right to dictate to Canada policies on developing its resources? And how about applying those standards to coal mining in the US, especially mountain top removal? Plenty to work on here at home if stopping destructive practices is the goal…
Media has stirred the public into various lynch mobs which think of themselves as Crusaders, each intent on crushing its particular evil demon. But it seems everyone is someones demon, even the centrists, like myself. I feel like a red headed step child in the midst of conservatives or liberals.
In the sixties we had demonstrations against nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons, pulp mills, mining ventures, new electric power plants buring coal, oil or gas.
The term NIMBY was invented then. Most demonstrators were at least middle class, disaffected young people who relied on their generopus parents to stay in school without learning much.An excellent book written in the 70s was “Overload” by Arthur Hailey. It is a novel about the power industry and the various environmental groups (good and bad) who oppose every development project. It is an excellent insight how these groups work.
We now have highly organized pseudo-scientific groups who brainwash the average citizen with half truths and outright lies to make their point. Al Gore’s propaganda machine is formidable, as is Green Peace, the David Suzuki Foundation, the Sierra Club and a number of others. If Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebles, were alive today he would stand in admiration of the likes of Al Gore and David Suzuki. We now have a class called “eco-millionaires” who get rich by exploiting fear! Ralph Nader was a true crusader who did not earn much from his efforts, and his cases were well documented. He could have earned much more money as a prosecution lawyer.
Unfortunately, politicians now bend to every pressure group and as a result many worthy projects are slowed down unnecessarily or stopped in their tracks. The group that sponsored the Alaska gas pipeline is now considering piping the gas to Valdez and liquifying it there for shipment to Asia where it will be worth twice as much as in the continental USA, and earn valuable foreign exchange. The shipping costs will also be lower. No doubt many will intervene and object.
Crude from Venezuela is very costly to refine! At one point in time the United States had enough crude available but instead we exported it to other countries while buying cheap oil from the middle east. And what we didn’t export, we’ve stockpiled like crazy to fuel the military. But there still is a lot of oil available in the United States. There’s also other types of resources available as well. In Nevada, where I live, they’ve discovered minerals which are used to make batteries to power electric cars, cellphone batteries, and all kinds of other gadgets but of course since practically everything is made in China now, who do you think we’ll be exporting it to? It’ll create jobs in Nevada and I’m sorry to say Nevada is in desperate need of jobs since its ranked the highest in the nation for unemployment but it won’t help the national economy because since companies like to have things made in China all we’re doing is supporting their economy. And the reason why companies have things made in China rather than the US is China doesn’t have as many environmental regulations nor do they have unions! As far as the oil pipeline I don’t see why its a big issue? When we import Oil from the middle east in comes on Big Ships and when those big ships sink or become damaged by severe weather, oil spills all over the ocean! I think the point is that anytime we process oil, there are some some risks. By sea, by air, and by land!
Good post, Katidit; I do a lot of risk analysis for oil and gas companies, and they take great care to have designs that are reliable so that the overall project keeps running safely and makes a profit.
Having said that, everything has risk attached to it as you say. Before there was international tanker regulation, those rusting hulks, registered in Liberia, Panama or some other “flexible” jurisdiction that docked in the US were an enormous risk to US waters. We now have double-hulled tankers that require frequent inspection that greatly reduce any risk. The biggest risk now is the skills of the crew.
The Exxon Valdez was a modern and reliable tanker; unfortunately captain Hazaelwood was not at the helm (drunk in his cabin) and the mate in charge did not have the detailed knowledge of where the Bligh Reef was located in Prince William Sound. This accident was caused by “human factors” as classified by insurance firms.
With respect to heavy Venezuelan oil, it is a difficult fuel with lots of Vanadium which makes it more difficult to process. It also generates a lot of CO2 in its extraction and upgrading. Some of it is extracted and mixed with water and then directly pumped into tankers and sent to Florida Light & Power to be burned in their boilers to generate electricity. It’s affectionately called the “Fuel from Hell”. The people boycotting the XL pipeline could refocus their efforts.
In terms of risk people have a subjective idea of what is dangerous. Among occupations, for instance, farming is more dangerous than police work; more farmers get killed on the job than cops. You don’t see many TV dramas about farmers getting crushed by their combines or tractors.
When substances are proven to be hazardous, they end up being banned soon. CFCs, like the old Freon 12 was banned in 1987 by the Montreal Protocol. Long before that, asbestos (of which Canada was the world’s largest producer) was banned. Now the fuel additive MTBE has been banned because it is water soluble and can easily contaminate the drinking water.
For the average citizen the car remains the biggest controllable killer; you have a 1 in 1000-1500 chance of being killed in a car accident over your lifetime. Nothing comes even close!! For the same distance traveled, airplanes are 4 times as safe.
If the crude’s sold at a discount to light crude, that could explain it. There can be significant per-barrel price differences, depending on crude type.
West Texas sweet crude is about the easiest US crude to refine, as is Arabian light crude. Venezuelan crude has more impurities (more difficult to refine) and sour crude (with sulfur) is more difficult as well. Remember, the new diesel specs virtually eliminate any sulfur allowed.
Generally, the lighter the crude and fewer imputities, the easiest it is to refine.
Some North African crude from Algeria was so good they could just filter it and put it into heavy duty diesels where it ran just fine.
Government owned oil companies often do not go by the normal market approach to doing business. A few years ago Chavez was selling heating oil to poor Americans at very low prices, using oil as a propaganda tool! Venezuelans still buy gasoline at subsidized prices, as do citizens of Saudi Arabia. In this case it is to avoid riots in the streets, and to keep totalitarian governments in power. Nigeria has just tried to eliminate subsidies on gasoline and there is a general strike AND riots in the streets looming.
During the time of the Roman Empire, poor citizens got “panum et circensus”, bread and games, to keep them quiet.
When did they change the Freon regulations in the United States? I know they no longer use the older Freon in automobiles (I went through this when I owned a 1992 Plymouth Laser and the A/C stopped working in 2001 and the freon that was used in the car was extremely expensive to come by and the mechanic said that type wasn’t used any more in automobiles). This also applies to older refrigerators (I used to sell appliances for Best Buy) and a lot of people claimed that since Appliance manufacturers switched to the newer refridgerant several years ago, the compressors had more issues? I’m not a HVAC specialist or a Refrigerator repair specialist but I couldn’t see the connection? I forget what type of refrigerant is used in currant refrigerators.