War on Pipelines is about Economy, not Environment

[Gone_Fishin]

War on Pipelines is about Economy, not Environment



The Keystone Pipeline started moving oil this week.

You are forgiven if you didn’t notice. This is Keystone South which takes US crude oil from Cushing, Oklahoma to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Unlike Keystone North, which would take Canadian oil to Cushing and beyond, few voices protested this southern leg. In fact, President Obama personally visited Oklahoma in March 2012 and vowed to cut through any obstacles.

Why do you think that is?

There is a glut of US oil stored in Cushing waiting for pipeline capacity. That glut is due to dramatically increased oil production in North Dakota’s Bakken Fields. Bakken now produces about 700,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) because of fracking (injecting water and chemicals into shale rock), a process every bit as controversial as oil sands drilling. Bakken oil has to go somewhere. It is going to Cushing, where it waits.

Keystone South will move 700,000 bbl/d from Cushing to Texas. Enbridge last year reversed the flow of the existing Seaway pipeline to take oil out of Cushing, and is increasing Seaway capacity. I bet you haven’t heard about that pipeline project, either.

Gulf Coast refineries need more oil. When they can’t get enough, they are forced to purchase Brent (world market) oil which is typically $10 to $20/bbl more expensive. And because West Texas oil is just sitting in Cushing, its price tumbles. The Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association declares Oklahoma is losing more than $60 million a year in tax revenue because of the price differential.

This echoes Canadian Energy Minister Joe Oliver. He says Canada loses up to $50 million per day (about $18 billion per year) because Canada can’t get its oil to market. We can’t even get the West Texas price in Cushing. Forget Brent world price until we can deliver oil to tidewater.

Those pipelines that move American oil are built by some of the same companies that propose Canadian pipelines. Why are environmentalists frantic about pipelines in Canada but AOK with US pipelines? Well, maybe it is about whose oil is being moved.

We know from comprehensive research done by Vancouver freelancer Vivian Krause and others that US money – some of it from US oil company foundations – is paying for a lot of the activism against pipelines in Canada.

Why do Americans want to spend big bucks to block pipelines that would take Canadian oil to market? It’s clearly not about pipeline safety because they are approving similar pipelines all across America.

It’s about the economy. And that’s their right. But let’s see it for what it is. And let’s make decisions in Canada that are equally in our own best interests.

[bob vernon]

Nice wedge.

[hobbyguy]

While there is an economic angle, there are indeed many environmental issues surrounding dilbit.

For example: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/transport-of-alberta-oilsands-products-risky-u-s-study-warns-1.2511559

You will note in the above article that dilbit is not officially classified as crude oil. It is something else.

Do some reading about pet coke, and the environmental problems from that, and realize that bitumen is heavy on the pet coke. Put that in the context of the discussion of AGW, and it becomes a major polarizing factor.

One of the "big deals" with dilbit is whether or not it floats, or sinks, and whether or not clean up techniques can be successful. The ongoing saga with the Kalamazoo spill has given people the perception that clean up of dilbit is much more difficult, and may be impossible. The answers are all quite fuzzy as there has not been enough research done on actual dilbit spills. However, conventional techniques run into a lot of problems with dilbit. Disperants (a bad idea anyway) only work if applied very soon after the spill, perhaps within a window as short as 5-6 hours. Dilbit weathers much more rapidly than typical heavy crude. Weathering leads to the product becoming neutrally or negatively buoyant, limiting the effectiveness of booms. That means that the clean up of contained portions of the spill must be done very rapidly to avoid losses. Those additional issues are on top of what has become, in the public eye, a very real understanding that marine oil spills do not, in fact, get cleaned up, especially in light of: http://www.ask.com/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill?o=2801&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.comhttp://www.nature.com/news/2010/100117/full/news.2010.16.html Note that the geology of Prince William sound, which has contributed to an ongoing set of environmental issues, is very similar to that of BC's coast.

The next side of it that there is indeed an economic side to environmental concerns. Whether you are a shrimper in Louisiana, a commercial fisherman in Alaska, or a whale watching guide in Queen Charlotte city, you will have your paycheck either diminished or eliminated when the oil guys screw up. And as has been evident in both the Deep Water Horizon case, and the Exxon Valdez case, the oil companies will do everything they can to NOT to replace them.

This kind of thing doesn't help perceptions: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/17/freedom-industries-bankruptcy-west-virginia-chemical-spill_n_4619385.html as many folks think that if there are serious spills, the operators (especially "flag of convenience" tanker operators, will just "bail" and leave their mess behind.

The real economic angle behind the dilbit and dilbit pipelines is that it is a crappy product. It is lower octane content, higher byproduct content, and especially higher pet coke content. That's why nobody wants it unless it is dirt cheap. It is a poor quality product.