[les3547]

I posted this to get an American perspective because I honestly don't know what all the local or regional issues are. All we hear here is, how much opposition there is to this and not really the reasons why. It sounds like the old Soviet Union is about to invade from what is reported. Protests in Washington. People barricading their properties, etc.

Most interesting to hear that the Canadian press isn't reporting both sides of the issue. I wonder what's up with that.

[Peter Zack]

Oh we hear some of it. Like the example I posted above of the guy who's taken the payment to cross his land and now protesting. But they report the 'bigger picture'. That the plan is such 'n such and the opposition is concerned about land use, water rights etc.

I guess to be more specific, if you live in a county or state that is affected, are there other concerns or issues about this?

[jac]

I doubt, OP, that those who oppose the pipeline are particularly concerned with the nationalities. In fairness to them, it just happens to be Canadian. It's election time and billions ride on the slightest gaff before the talking heads in the media, much less a project which has the potential to contaminate the Ogallala aquifer. This is the major (and non-renewable) source of agricultural ground-water for the High Plains.
Wait 'till after the Presidential election and you will see a much more favourable ride for the TC. But during the campaign, hypocrisy will rule.

And please remember that per capita, Canadians are damnably good at polluting and over-consuming, all the while pointing at the aberrant behavior of the rest of the world.

By the way, just ask the Yenke Dene Alliance what they think of the 'Canadian' Northwest Gateway Pipeline proposed by Enbridge to carry crude to Kitimat for trans-shipment to Asia. You'll hear just as much critisicm on a more localized scale. At least until enough Dene get a buy-out.

[Peter Zack]

And please remember that per capita, Canadians are damnably good at polluting and over-consuming, all the while pointing at the aberrant behavior of the rest of the world.

I hear you loud and clear. We have a government right now that I couldn't be less proud of. Our record before they got elected was terrible and it's much, much worse now. I fear for the message we're sending to the rest of the world; "It's fine to consume and pollute as much as you like, we'll do the same and stand by, saying and doing nothing."

[jac]

Peter, Winston Churchill once said, "The Americans always do the right thing, after they've tried everything else." :-)

[wlachan]

China and India steal jobs daily and undercut American made products. They steal copyrights of all kinds to copy western ideas and nearly nothing is done or said.

Nobody steals jobs from anybody. The truth is that your smart CEOs found a way to reduce cost and sold you people off in the long run. Every developed countries were flooded with cheap and young labours once, and some developing countries are at the same stage now. Besides, what made the Americans deserve more than the rest of the human population? And don't get me start with the copyright thing. I am no Indian but the Basmati rice patent made me sick. Where did the US rocket technologies came from? What are they doing in Pacific Asia now? The list goes on. Americans are no less evil and the world hates America not for no reason.

[jac]

" the world hates America not for no reason"

I don't but then nobody knows we're up here so we're seldom part of the world.

[boriscleto]

Coal Ash, Keystone XL Dropped from Transportation Bill | AlterNet

[dadipentak]

nobody knows we're up here so we're seldom part of the world.

At the rate things are going, Cape Dorset is going to be the new Cancun (if it's not under water.)

[jac]

Aw don't do that to us, please. The Disney machine will discover us and start throwing lemmings off cliffs again.

[ElJamoquio]

" the world hates America not for no reason"

I don't but then nobody knows we're up here so we're seldom part of the world.

Hey, we let you live in our attic and don't even charge you rent. Maybe you should foot the bill for the pipeline, eh?

PS - stop making new provinces and territories, I don't want to have to learn new stuff.




(is that enough reason to hate america? I could go on).

[magkelly]

I do worry about the impact of drilling and pipelines on the environment. That being said my primary objection to putting in more oil wells and pipelines is the fact that the oil isn't going to necessarily be used for the need of the USA but sold. Fact we have billions of barrels of oil stock piled in the Oil Reserves but even when gas prices are sky high they never touch it. We don't need Saudia Arabia and so forth really when it comes to oil production so why do we still buy their oil? They want more wells, more pipelines but that oil won't likely end up being used in this country anymore than the oil in the Reserves will be. So no, I don't want it. Not unless laws are passed stopping the buying of foreign oil or the selling of our oil to other countries. Feeding a public sense of worry by putting in more wells and pipelines then selling it off is just bogus, IMHO. They want more they need to make sure it will get used HERE or I will never agree with it.

[ElJamoquio]

I disagree.

First off, the strategic oil reserve isn't 'billions', it's about 700 million or something, and there was some sell-off in the Bush administration if I recall correctly.

Second, we, and the world, "need" oil from Saudi Arabia. The US actually doesn't purchase a lot of oil from them (generally a bit over 10% of usage), we get more from Canada, and sometimes get more from Mexico. On the world market it's easier for the US to purchase oil from our neighbors and closer to ship middle-eastern-oil to Europe and China. But if Saudi Arabia stopped selling oil tomorrow, the price of oil would skyrocket. Most people won't stop driving to work if gas goes from $3.50 to $7.00.

I don't blame you if you don't want oil to be transported in massive quantities across America to be refined in Texas and Louisiana (and New Jersey and...) . That said, if America is going to continue to be a world leader in refining, which seems to be the case, I'd rather have the oil transported in a pipe than transported in a truck on our nation's highways. Trucks cause ~3-10 thousand times more damage to our highways than cars, they use up a larger portion of the energy pie they're transporting, and they're more prone to accidents and spills (admittedly the spills are of lower volume).

[les3547]

The article below basically sums up American resistance. Address the environmental concerns, and there would likely be little objection (bolded paragraphs below are my doing):

With the Keystone XL pipeline igniting a groundswell of public opposition against dirty tar sands from Canada, the safety risks of transporting tar sands oil by pipeline are finally ripe for action. The delay in permitting the 1,700 mile Keystone XL pipeline defied all odds and predictions for a project that had long been assumed to be a "done deal." Encouraged by hundreds of thousands of Americans who wrote to oppose the pipeline, President Obama announced . . . that the administration would "take the time to ensure that all questions are properly addressed and all the potential impacts are properly understood." This prudent assessment is expected to move the government's final decision on whether to approve the project until at least 2013.

But the president's announcement is by no means the end of the story, and it is just the beginning of the fight to protect America's clean water, wildlife and lands from pipelines spilling toxic tar sands oil. Pipeline companies are already navigating to circumvent the latest decision. TransCanada Corporation, which hopes to build the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to Texas, quickly struck a deal with Nebraska legislators to re-route a small portion of the pipeline and avoid the fierce opposition in the Sand Hills, hoping for a smoother ride in the forthcoming review.

And other companies have quickly hatched their own plans to achieve the long-sought prize of turning the land-locked tar sands region of Canada into a global supplier by winning access to port facilities in Texas. For example, Enbridge Inc., another Canadian pipeline company, made a bold move after Obama's announcement. Enbridge has bought up a large share of an existing pipeline -- the Seaway Crude line -- that currently transports conventional oil from Texas to Oklahoma. Enbridge plans to reverse the flow of oil in order to be able to ship tar sands oil from Alberta through Enbridge's existing pipelines in the U.S. midwest, and now all the way to the port refineries of Texas. They hope to exploit loopholes in our current law that would allow such a strategy without the environmental assessments required of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Here is the 2.8 million gallon question: Now that the Sand Hills of Nebraska are safe from Keystone XL, which communities will next draw the short straw and be stuck with a pipeline with the potential for a 2.8 million gallon spill of toxic tar sands sludge? According to the State Department's environmental impact statement, 2.8 million gallons is the maximum spill potential for Keystone XL. The State Department also concluded that the pipeline would likely have "1.18 to 1.83 spills greater than 2,100 gallons per year." In other words, despite all the empty assurances on safety, we already know that this pipeline is unsafe and going to leak, and leak often.

When Vice President Dick Cheney called in 2001 for America to expand our reliance on Canadian tar sands oil as a "pillar of sustained North American energy and economic security," Canadian tar sands represented only 2% of U.S. oil supply. New pipeline capacity built in the past year has allowed us to crank up imports to almost three times that level. But these pipelines are rupturing at an alarming rate: tar sands oil accounted for a majority of the oil spilled from pipelines in the United States last year, even though it accounts for only a small fraction of the oil transported by pipeline throughout the nation.

The transport of tar sands oil through pipelines is riskier and more dangerous than the transport of conventional oil through pipelines. In its raw form (called bitumen), the "oil" extracted from tar sands mining is actually a tar-like sludge. It must be refined in special refineries to turn it into liquid gasoline and diesel (a process that creates more pollution than refining conventional oil). Increasingly, oil companies are diluting the raw sludge with secret chemicals and forcing it through pipelines under high pressures to get it to the refineries at the far end of the pipeline. The Environmental Protection Agency, which is responsible for cleaning up spills, has expressed alarm that pipeline companies are not forced to disclose the chemicals they are mixing with tar sands and injecting into the pipelines. They point out that they've had to deal with unknown toxic compounds like benzene in responding to recent tar sands pipeline ruptures. The mixture of secret chemicals and tar sands sludge creates a blend that is particularly corrosive on pipelines, as documented in the report "Tar Sands Pipeline Safety Risks."

Spills are happening on both sides of the border. Alberta's tar sands pipeline network has more than 10 times the number of spills as U.S. pipelines. Here at home, Enbridge's pipeline system dumped millions of gallons of toxic tar sands sludge into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan last year. Enbridge claims - and the media has dutifully reported -- that 843,000 gallons spilled. But EPA recently disclosed that it has already recovered 1.1 million gallons of oil (keep in mind that only a small portion of spilled oil is actually recovered -- usually less than 15%). The river is still closed, and EPA reports that there is no end in sight to what they had initially hoped would be a quick cleanup. They attribute the delay to the difficulties of dealing with tar sands oil, which is heavy and sinks quickly in water, unlike conventional oil that floats and can be skimmed or absorbed with pads. Likewise, TransCanada's most recent tar sands pipeline, Keystone 1, has already spilled 14 times in just one year of operation, including a 60-foot geyser in North Dakota.

Pipeline safety is the responsibility of the Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, but our safety regulators are currently blindfolded to what is actually being transported through the system. This means that pipeline operators can change what is being shipped through the pipeline with no guidance on whether raw tar sands sludge can be transported safely. U.S. pipeline standards must be updated to prepare for the corrosive effects of moving tar sands sludge at high pressure, and other potential hazards unique to this dirty fuel.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was a terrible lesson in what happens when outdated safety standards don't keep pace with modern industry trends and the quest for extreme energy. We are ignoring that very lesson as we pump more and more dangerous tar sands sludge through pipelines designed for conventional oil.

With more than a year before the final decision on Keystone XL is expected, President Obama now has an opportunity to ask his pipeline regulators to review recent tar sands pipeline spills and develop new safety standards to better deal with this new threat. The Pipeline Transportation Safety Improvement Act, which was recently passed by the U.S. Senate with strong bipartisan support, calls for just such a study. But the Transportation Department doesn't need to wait for the House to act in order to begin its investigation.

[jac]

Last year, Canada supplied 2,324 bod to the US. The next highest import was from Saudi Arabia at 1,465 bpd. We are by far the largest supplier and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Canadian exports will get sold and if the US doesn't contract it, Asia will. That in turn will sustain the Asian conveyor-belt of cheap imports that are wreaking havoc on North American industries and jobs. And Canadians will again be called the'blue-eyed Arabs from the North'. Here we are, trying to provide relief for poor, unemployed oil-tycoons in Texas and everyone hates us again.
Also, take a Google at where all the money comes from to organize the street and Congressional lobbies that protest the environmental disaster that is the Oil Sands. Mom and Pop on Main Street don't have that kind of money to throw at the campaign.
Being the 51st state takes a lot of work, eh?