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posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday October 15 2014, @05:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the where-you-eat dept.

Bloomberg reports that Canadians have come up with an all-Canadian route to get oil-sands crude from Alberta to a refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick that will give Canada access, via supertanker, to the same Louisiana and Texas refineries Keystone was meant to supply. The pipeline, built by Energy East, will cost $10.7 billion and could be up and running by 2018. Its 4,600-kilometer path, taking advantage of a vast length of existing and underused natural gas pipeline, would wend through six provinces and four time zones. "It would be Keystone on steroids, more than twice as long and carrying a third more crude," writes Bloomberg. "And if you’re a fed-up Canadian, like Prime Minister Stephen Harper, there’s a bonus: Obama can’t do a single thing about it." So confident is TransCanada Corp., the chief backer of both Keystone and Energy East, of success that Alex Pourbaix, the executive in charge, spoke of the cross-Canada line as virtually a done deal. “With one project,” Energy East will give Alberta’s oil sands not only an outlet to “eastern Canadian markets but to global markets,” says Pourbaix. “And we’ve done so at scale, with a 1.1 million barrel per day pipeline, which will go a long way to removing the specter of those big differentials for many years to come.”

The pipeline will also prove a blow to environmentalists who have made central to the anti-Keystone arguments the concept that if Keystone can be stopped, most of that polluting heavy crude will stay in the ground. With 168 billion proven barrels of oil, though, Canada’s oil sands represent the third-largest oil reserves in the world, and that oil is likely to find its way to shore one way or another. “It’s always been clear that denying it or slowing Keystone wasn’t going to stop the flow of Canadian oil,” says Michael Levi. What Energy East means for the Keystone XL pipeline remains to be seen. “Maybe this will be a wake up call to President Obama and U.S. policymakers to say ‘Hmmm we’re going to get shut out of not just the energy, but all those jobs that are going to go into building that pipeline. Now they are all going to go into Canada," says Aaron Task. “This is all about ‘You snooze, you lose.’”

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday October 16 2014, @08:18AM

    by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Thursday October 16 2014, @08:18AM (#106561) Journal

    Why EXACTLY would we want it? From what I understand it isn't oil sands its TAR sands, which requires a LOT of processing and in its liquid form has sulfur up the ass so is unusable without heavy treatment. Why would we want this when we can buy South American oil that is...you know, actual OIL and has less sulfur and require less processing?

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 16 2014, @12:32PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 16 2014, @12:32PM (#106588) Journal

    Why EXACTLY would we want it?

    We can turn it into things we want, like civilization.

    • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday October 17 2014, @06:42AM

      by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Friday October 17 2014, @06:42AM (#106902) Journal

      OMFG did you just attempt to break down a complex issue by comparing it to a fricking video game? Really? What's next, capitalism as explained by Bioshock? And just FYI but high sulfur oil is pretty much worthless without expensive sulfur removal, not for plastics, not for fuel, in fact that last article I saw had most of the tar sands oil ending up in China because they don't give a fuck about acid rain as long as they can get it cheap.

      So again how EXACTLY does having a shitpile of tar that smells like assholes and causes acid rain good for America?

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      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 17 2014, @10:30AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 17 2014, @10:30AM (#106937) Journal

        OMFG did you just attempt to break down a complex issue by comparing it to a fricking video game?

        What complex issue? Oil is valuable because we use it for valuable stuff. That's it.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 17 2014, @12:51PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 17 2014, @12:51PM (#106981) Journal
        As an additional reason not to overthink this, if all of these problems with this particular oil were bad enough that it weren't worth extracting, then they wouldn't extract it. It's that simple. These people aren't in the business to lose money.

        Lots of things are hard or costly, but they get done anyway because even with the difficulty and cost they're worth doing.
        • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Sunday October 19 2014, @03:02AM

          by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday October 19 2014, @03:02AM (#107459) Journal

          "Hey if Agent Orange was so dangerous, they wouldn't have made it right?" is that REALLY the argument you are gonna make? Just FYI the reason its profitable is that the Chinese government does not give a single fuck, not about dumping acid rain into the ocean, not about poisoning their people, not one single fuck to give.

          but again we are NOT talking about China we were talking about AMERICA and you have yet to give us a single reason, just one, why a bunch of high sulfur tar sands, which again just FYI is illegal to sell as oil in the USA because it won't meet the emissions standards of ANY state with extreme processing which makes it MORE expensive that other alternative like SA oil, is "good for America"...lets hear it.

          --
          ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 19 2014, @05:49PM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 19 2014, @05:49PM (#107591) Journal

            "Hey if Agent Orange was so dangerous, they wouldn't have made it right?" is that REALLY the argument you are gonna make?

            There you go. You answered your own questions.

            but again we are NOT talking about China we were talking about AMERICA and you have yet to give us a single reason, just one, why a bunch of high sulfur tar sands, which again just FYI is illegal to sell as oil in the USA because it won't meet the emissions standards of ANY state with extreme processing which makes it MORE expensive that other alternative like SA oil, is "good for America"...lets hear it.

            You do realize "extreme processing" is just not that expensive, right? And selling to China is just fine as a reason to extract oil from tar sands.