Posted on 05/17/2014 5:44:19 AM PDT by Kaslin
What is this incessant nonsense over Keystone XL?
Its a pipeline, for crying out loud. The United States already has 185,000 miles of liquid petroleum pipelines, 320,000 miles of natural gas transmission pipelines, and more than 2,000,000 miles of gas distribution pipelines. Using the latest steel, valves and other technologies to build another 1,179 miles of pipe to move 830,000 barrels of oil per day safely from Alberta, Canada oil sands country and North Dakotas Bakken shale territory to Texas refineries should not be an earth-shattering matter.
KXL would create jobs in an economy that grew at a pathetic Depression-era clip of 0.1% during the first quarter, and where the true jobless rate (unemployed, underemployed and those no longer looking) is almost 13 percent, and much worse for minorities.
In fact, Keystone would create some 20,000 construction jobs; another 10,000 in factories that make the steel, pipelines, valves, cement and heavy equipment needed to build the pipeline; thousands more in hotel, restaurant and other support industries; and still more jobs in the oil fields whose output would be transported to refineries and petrochemical plants where still more workers would be employed.
States along the pipeline route would receive $5 billion in new property tax revenues, and still more in workers income tax payments. Depleted federal coffers would also realize hefty gains.
The pipeline would ease railroad congestion all over the central USA. The pipelines absence is forcing oil producers to move crude by railroad tanker car. That certainly improves the bottom line for RR companies and folks like Warren Buffet who have big-time investments in tankers.
But it causes train logjams and delays that are creating backlogs in getting fertilizer and other supplies to farmers, who have already been hard-hit by a long winter and now may not be able to plant on schedule. Come fall, their efforts to ship corn, wheat and other crops to market will also be stymied.
By reducing the need for RR tankers, KXL would also reduce oil spills and improve safety. A 2013 derailment in Quebec killed 47 people; 2014 rail accidents in Colorado and Virginia resulted in significant oil spills but fortunately no deaths. The Bakken Fields light crude contains more dissolved gases and thus is more flammable than heavier crudes (like Canadian oil sands output), but both tanker cars and the Keystone pipeline would carry a variety of crude products.
Improved track maintenance, train scheduling and other safety practices would reduce rail accidents and spills. However, as US State Department studies point out, the Keystone pipeline is inherently safer than RR alternatives and would likely result in fewer than 520 barrels of crude being spilled annually, compared to 32,000 barrels in the three rail spills just noted.
KXL will augment Americas national security, make North America more energy independent, further improve US balance of trade, reduce global supply and demand imbalances, and aid our European allies in their quest to counter Vladimir Putins energy blackmail.
The hydrocarbon wealth the pipeline would transport will help ensure improved human health, welfare, living standards and other many other benefits, in a more stable world that has more sources of jobs, wealth and income equality. Approval would improve relations with our ally and trading partner Canada. Not tapping and safely transporting all these oil, natural gas and propane resources makes no sense.
But despite all these solid reasons for building the pipeline President Obama refuses to approve it, even to protect vulnerable Democrat politicians, for fear of offending ultra Keystone hater Tom Steyer or losing his hardcore eco-base. Senator Harry Reid can hardly bring himself to allow even votes on nonbinding resolutions in support of KXL. And rabid environmentalists say theyre prepared to go to jail over it.
What in blazes is going on here?
Keystone is symbolic! In fact, it has become the symbol of Big Green environmentalisms immutable opposition to and hatred of anything hydrocarbon. KXL is fracking, oil sands, onshore and offshore drilling and, above all, catastrophic manmade climate disruption (the latest nom de guerre, since the global warming and climate change monikers and models have abjectly failed to reflect climate reality).
KXL represents their determination to de-develop the United States, reduce our energy use and living standards, redistribute wealth and permit Third World development only in accordance with their supposed sustainable development and renewable energy principles.
The Keystone XL pipeline issue is as phony as a $3 bill. Blocking its construction will have about as much effect on Earths climate as a hand grenade would in stopping a hurricane, even if carbon dioxide does influence weather and climate change far more than thousands of scientists say it does.
(More than 1,000 climate scientists, 31,000 American scientists and 48% of US meteorologists say there is no evidence that humans are causing dangerous warming or climate change. And it is increasingly obvious that much of the remaining consensus is obtained by harassing, intimidating and browbeating any scientists who might be tempted to stray from the alarmist party line.)
China, India, Indonesia, Brazil and dozens of other countries are burning coal, driving cars, modernizing their hydrocarbon-based economies and emitting CO2 at a fevered pace. Further delaying or ultimately blocking Keystone will have no effect, especially if the oil simply goes to Asia, instead of the USA.
However, Big Green has staked its power and reputation on Keystone and it will not back down.
This $13.4-billion-per-year US eco industry is determined to block the Keystone pipeline. As Washington Examiner columnist Ron Arnold revealed, the $789-million Rockefeller Brothers Fund launched its tar sands and pipeline campaigns in 2008. It funded a dozen attack groups, told them what the Fund wanted done, and presented the strategy and tactics for mobilizing the troops, inventing and spotlighting the pipelines alleged dangers, recruiting always-helpful media allies, and slowing and stopping KXL.
The campaigns are backed up by other fat-cat liberal foundations that collectively have more than $100 billion in assets! As Arnold pointed out, they gave more than $80 billion to some 16,000 American environmental activist groups between 2000 and 2012 and those groups were also supported by over $100 million in grants from US government agencies!
Hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer has promised to give $100 million to anti-Keystone Democrats. Law firms are making serious money filing lawsuits against KXL. And of course Hollywood elites can always be counted on to lend their support and innate grasp of energy and economic issues to pipeline opponents.
This is a force to be reckoned with, a force that is largely responsible for inflicting nearly $1.9 trillion in regulatory compliance costs on United States businesses and families. Thats one-eighth of the entire US economy. Its no wonder job, economic and investment growth rates are so miserably low.
President Obama and other Democrats, environmentalists and liberals love to expound on how compassionate and socially responsible they are. How devoted to justice, workers, middle class families, jobs, and human health, safety and welfare. How honest, transparent, respectful of others opinions and needs, and accountable for their mistakes and failures.
Am I the only one who sees pitifully little evidence for any of these self-proclaimed saintly attributes?
Keystone epitomizes how callous, arrogant, hypocritical and destructive the Big Green authoritarians have become. Its high time the rights and needs of poor and middle class families got some recognition.
Um, because it keeps prices high, which increases the dependent class, which erodes the middle class, and empowers our leftist dictator-wannabes.
Those of us who remember the construction of the Alaska pipeline in the 70s witnesses the same chorus. Now, it is far from controversial.
There’s no mystery here...JUST FOLLOW THE MONEY....
Canadian Oil and the Keystone Pipeline
Burlington Northern Santa Fe(BNSF) Railroad owns all of the rail lines in the US connecting to western Canada, and they haul 80%+ of the crude from Canada to the midwest and Texas, or charge other Short Line railroads a fee to use their tracks.
BNSF charges $30 per barrel to haul the oil, where the Keystone would cost $10 by the State Departments own estimates.
BNSF is owned by Berkshire-Hathaway whose chairman is Warren Buffet.
In the last 2 election cycles, Buffet gave extensively to democrat causes and candidates, including $40K+ to Obama in 2012. He also bundled and hosted numerous fundraisers for Obama.
Buffet could stand to lose $2B+ a year if the pipeline goes in, and he makes the same amount every year its delayed.
If anyone believes the pipeline isnt being blocked by Obama on Buffet’s behalf, theyre nuts.
The local city owned power company wanted to invest in a new coal fired plant that was to be built. That would have allowed them to better serve their customers by buying power at a preferred rate rather than the higher rate. You’d have thought they were trying to sacrifice children on alters. (Actually, that would probably have been preferred by the lunatics.) Now, the new plant was going to be built anyway. The question was whether or not to invest in it in exchange for preferred rates. I’ve never witnessed such insane hysteria. They held a referendum and the proposal failed. Now our power rates are sky-high. The liberal anti-(fill-in-today’s-lunatic-rant)people are idiots.
Start suing these groups. Force them to use their vast wealth to defend their position in friendly courts throughout north America.
Reagan bankrupted the Soviets by foring them to spend money. As the left has shown us inn Alaska, forcing Palin to spend her own money to defend against bogus lawsuits works.
Once the very weath find their money is being thrown into a pit and being spent on something useful, they will back down. But it takes strength and courage to go after them.
OK!! Everybody pay attention!
Lesson for today:
1. The sun is 1,300,000 times as big as the earth.
2. The sun is a ball of fire that controls the climates of all its planets.
3. The earth is one of the suns planets.
4. The earth is a speck in comparison to the size of the sun.
5. Inhabitants of the earth are less than specks.
Study Question: How do less-than-specks in congress plan to control the sun?
Years ago I had people tell me the ALASKA pipeline would never be built. I said that when the Arabs cut off the oil again it would be built.
The Arabs cut off the oil, the pipeline was built.
Also back then, the animal rights activists were howling about the caribou and how they would all die off if the Alaska pipeline was built. Turns out that the caribou herds thrived because the young ones would hang out near the pipeline for the heat and in turn many more young ones survived the winters.
And that pipeline was built with 1970’s technology.
Heard of any problems with that project?
Liberals in charge leads to nothing but economic depressions and more goberment power.
To Hell with that, they are belching out megatons of black smoke, full of soot and very toxic compounds
It's so bad, you can't see two blocks during the daytime, you have to wear a mask, you can see it from space.
Answer: The RATs will lie and pass a law.
That's the plan.
bkmk
The author fails to mention that keystone was planned in compliance with the articles in NAFTA ...North American Free Trade Agreement which requires Canada, in this case, to offer energy resources to the United States prior to offering on the world market. Abrogating an international trade agreement would cause America to lose much of what little credibility Obama has with the rest of the world. So he retreats to his basic strategy..lie deflect and stall...
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