Re: Pipeline Delays Devastating To Canadian Economy-Reports

[Romero]

But none of the Keystone oil would stay in the US. It would all be going to China.

[Romero]

You and your articles are claiming that Keystone will make the US less dependent on foreign oil, but that's false.

[Anonymous]

Diane Francis claims that much of the opposition to the oil sands actually comes from foreign countries such as Nigeria and Venezuela. I wonder if Thomas Mulcair wants to run for office in either of those two countries. ;)

[Romero]

I would prefer those refineries get their heavy crude from us rather than Venezuela or Nigeria despite what traitors like Mulcair say.

The Keystone pipeline would not lessen imports from those countries.

[Romero]

Diane Francis claims that much of the opposition to the oil sands actually comes from foreign countries such as Nigeria and Venezuela. I wonder if Thomas Mulcair wants to run for office in either of those two countries. ;)

The claims that opposition is coming from Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Venezuela etc. are silly. The opposition has been coming from Canadians and Americans.

[Anonymous]

Diane Francis claims that much of the opposition to the oil sands actually comes from foreign countries such as Nigeria and Venezuela. I wonder if Thomas Mulcair wants to run for office in either of those two countries. ;)

The claims that opposition is coming from Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Venezuela etc. are silly. The opposition has been coming from Canadians and Americans.

I believe they are involved with the opposition. It makes perfect sense, why would they want to increase supply and lower prices?. Those regimes are involved, but cannot do it openly.



A shipment of over-sized equipment from South Korea for use in the oil sands was stopped at the border. The equipment was being imported by U.S. oil giants, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil via the United States, which is when the problem arose.



The cheapest way to transport this cargo to land-locked Alberta was to barge the equipment up the Columbia River to get as close as possible to the U.S.-Canada border which is in Lewiston, Idaho. The equipment was to be loaded onto trucks and driven, at night, through Idaho and Montana across the border to their oil sands projects.



The two companies were asked to put up, and spent, $25 million to provide road "turnouts" or places where these wide loads could pull aside to make room for other traffic.



Somehow some entities got mobilized about the extra-size equipment and got organize to stop the shipment on the basis of highway safety, Matt Morrison, Executive Director of Pacific NorthWest Economic Region said in an interview at the Global Business Forum held in Banff every year and sponsored by the oil industry and Alberta government.



The issue became politicized in Idaho and Montana. Letters and other communications opposing the transport streamed into the Department of Highways in Montana, Morrison said.



"We were shocked that only 37 per cent of those who wrote complaining [about the equipment going to the oil sands] lived in the state and the rest were from places like Nigeria, Venezuela. Most were international," he said. "The equipment was held up for quite some time and some is still held up awaiting permits."

[Romero]

The claims that opposition is coming from Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Venezuela etc. are silly. The opposition has been coming from Canadians and Americans.

I believe they are involved with the opposition. It makes perfect sense, why would they want to increase supply and lower prices?. Those regimes are involved, but cannot do it openly.

Those countries aren't brainwashing Canadians and Americans into opposing Keystone.

It will provide safe, secure and reliable access to sources of oil that is critical to North American energy security and independence. I would prefer to have some long term contracts in place with Canadian suppliers rather than ones in Nigeria and Venezuela even if that traitor Mulcair doesn't.

That's nice. But Keystone is still not going to lessen American dependence on foreign oil.

[Romero]

How? All the Keystone oil would be going to China.

[Romero]

State Dept. Hid Contractor's Ties to Keystone XL Pipeline Company



Late on a Friday afternoon in early March, the State Department released a 2,000-page draft report downplaying the environmental risks of the northern portion of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would ferry oil from Canada's tar sands to refineries in Texas, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma. But when it released the report, State hid an important fact from the public: Experts who helped draft the report had previously worked for TransCanada, the company looking to build the Keystone pipeline, and other energy companies poised to benefit from Keystone's construction. State released documents in conjunction with the Keystone report in which these experts' work histories were redacted so that anyone reading the documents wouldn't know who'd previously hired them. Yet unredacted versions of these documents obtained by Mother Jones confirm that three experts working for an outside contractor had done consulting work for TransCanada and other oil companies with a stake in the Keystone's approval.



When the Keystone report—officially known as a "draft supplemental environmental impact statement"—was released, environmental activists ripped it as shoddy and misleading. Russ Girling, TransCanada's CEO, cheered the report as "an important step" toward receiving President Barack Obama's final stamp of approval for the pipeline.



Outside contractors (managed by the State Department) wrote the Keystone report, which neither endorsed nor rejected the Keystone pipeline. The contractor that produced the bulk of the report was Environmental Resources Management (ERM), an international consulting firm. On the day the State Department published the Keystone impact report, the agency also released a cache of documents that ERM submitted in 2012 to win the contract to produce the Keystone environmental report. That cache included a 55-page filing in which ERM stated it had no conflicts of interests writing the Keystone report.



But there was something strange about ERM's conflict-of-interest filing: The bios for the ERM's experts were redacted.



Here's what those redactions kept secret: ERM's second-in-command on the Keystone report, Andrew Bielakowski, had worked on three previous pipeline projects for TransCanada over seven years as an outside consultant. He also consulted on projects for ExxonMobil, BP, and ConocoPhillips, three of the Big Five oil companies that could benefit from the Keystone XL project and increased extraction of heavy crude oil taken from the Canadian tar sands.



Another ERM employee who contributed to State's Keystone report—and whose prior work history was also redacted—previously worked for Shell Oil; a third worked as a consultant for Koch Gateway Pipeline Company, a subsidiary of Koch Industries. Shell and Koch have a significant financial interest in the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. ERM itself has worked for Chevron, which has invested in Canadian tar sands extraction, according to its website.



http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/03/keystone-xl-contractor-ties-transcanada-state-department">//http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/03/keystone-xl-contractor-ties-transcanada-state-department

[Romero]

A pipeline that ruptured and leaked at least 80,000 gallons of oil into central Arkansas on Friday was transporting a heavy form of crude from the Canadian tar sands region, ExxonMobil told InsideClimate News.



Local police said the line gushed oil for 45 minutes before being stopped, according to media reports.



Crude oil ran through a subdivision of Mayflower, Ark., about 20 miles north of Little Rock. Twenty-two homes were evacuated, but no one was hospitalized, Exxon spokesman Charlie Engelmann said on Saturday.



According to a Saturday afternoon press release from Exxon, 189,000 gallons of oil and water have been recovered from the site so far, and it is prepared to clean up more than twice that amount.



Exxon's release said the company is "staging a response for over 10,000 barrels [420,000 gallons] to be conservative."



http://www.alternet.org/environment/exxon-confirms-80000-gallon-spill-contains-canadian-tar-sands-oil">//http://www.alternet.org/environment/exxon-confirms-80000-gallon-spill-contains-canadian-tar-sands-oil

Another big tar sands pipeline spill. Why did it rupture?

[Gary Oak]

http://rt.com/usa/native-americans-keystone-pipeline-475/">http://rt.com/usa/native-americans-keys ... eline-475/">http://rt.com/usa/native-americans-keystone-pipeline-475/



    Natives really seem to care about the environment