The Keystone Pipeline: Happy Days for Hummers or Hybrids?
By Robin Roush -
(June 19, 2012) It is often said that American voters care more about the “rising” price of gasoline than anything else, and that Obama’s re-election prospects depend entirely upon that.
Let us focus our attention on Alberta, Canada, where a vast acreage of “Tar Sands” awaits development. Envisioned is a 2000 mile pipeline which will carry 900,000 barrels daily of these noxious tar sands from Canada, into the United States, over the mountains and across the plains to a refinery at Port Arthur, Texas, on the Texas Gulf Coast. This destination is a tax-free “foreign trade zone.” This project is the focus of intense debate in the United States, fueled by Big Oil and neo-conservative, anti-environmental-regulation lobby money. The political rhetoric funded by the these oil interests has been successful in promoting accelerated, partial approval (earlier this year Obama approved the southern half) by propagating several myths to the American people which are simply untrue, and are examined here:
Myth: The Keystone Pipeline is an American project which merely originates in Canada. Moreover, the Canadians are historic allies of the United States, so the project carries little risk to American interests.
To the contrary, the project is owned not by American interests, but instead by Transcanada, a large international company with headquarters in Canada, with multinational financing. It owns 35,000 miles of pipelines in Canada, the United States and Mexico. This 2000 mile project involves many subsidiaries, stakeholders, leaseholders, contractors, subcontractors and other entities too numerous to mention, let alone identify, regulate or monitor.
Myth: The Keystone Pipeline will assure energy independence for the United States essential to our national security, because, by bringing the oil to America we can decrease our dependence on foreign oil. To the contrary, the tar sands oil is not intended for America and no additional benefit to our energy independence will arise. The oil is intended to be sold overseas.
Presently, we import oil from Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria, Iraq, the United Kingdom, Norway, Angola, Algeria and Colombia. Transcanada says the project will supply roughly half of the amount of oil the US imports from the Middle East and Venezuela – but conveniently leaves out an essential point: This tar sands oil will not reduce imports from those nations because it is all heading overseas.
The Tar Sands is expected to carry only an additional 900,000 barrels of oil a day which amounts to less than 5% of the oil needed to maintain our present oil use at current levels. (We now use about 20 million barrels a day.) If the Republican dominated Congress were to approve the various proposed regulations presently addressing highway fuel efficiency standards alone, an amount equivalent to the output of the Tar Sands project would be saved. US oil consumption is on a steady decline, and small measures could reduce that consumption even further. According to the Department of Energy, gasoline use is declining, a trend which will continue, because of energy efficiency standards. We could reduce that by as much as 4 million barrels a day by requiring more efficient heavy trucks, airplanes, and buildings. In contrast, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates an even greater reduction of up to 7 million barrels a day.
It seems we never have “needed” the Pipeline in the first place.
The oil tar sands will enter the US from Canada and be transported to a site in Texas where it will be refined for overseas shipment. It is easy to imagine that Americans will have “first dibs” just because it is already in our country. The politicians and oil interests have allowed this fiction to stay afloat without any intelligent scrutiny whatsoever. Instead, the refined oil will be made available to the entire global economy, and we will instead be competing to buy it against rapidly growing, oil hungry, developing nations such as China, India, Korea and Iran. Iran, for example, could escape the sanctions and embargos, by buying this oil from one or another “rogue” nation. Always remember the oil is not “ours” to sell- it belongs to the vast group of multi-nationals who have leased the rights to mine, transport, refine, and ultimately sell it.
Nor is the refinery a particularly “American company.” The state of Texas has made major concessions to the refineries, to establish a refinery “zone” with preferential taxes and incentives to even more multinational companies. There is no expectation that the profits will remain here, or that there will be taxable assets with a reliable revenue stream. Americans will pay a higher price to have this shipped out of the “zone” and onto Main Street. Valero Energy Corporation, the pipeline’s largest customer, has announced that it will focus its Port Arthur refinery on exports rather than the domestic needs of America.
Myth: The Keystone Pipeline will create wealth and jobs for Americans. Not necessarily, and the labor unions affected are not in agreement. The pipeline will create wealth for the multinational corporation which owns it. But what about jobs? According to Transcanada’s own data, 11% of the construction jobs on the earlier built Keystone pipeline in South Dakota were filled by South Dakotans–most of them for temporary, low-paying manual labor. (Rainforest Alliance)
The State Department’s own study suggests that far fewer jobs will be created and most of them will be non-local and temporary (National Wildlife Foundation). Two infrastructure construction unions (Transport Workers Union (TWU) and the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), the UAW and the Steelworkers have noted these facts and earlier opposed the President’s decision to continue the project’s review.
Myth: The Keystone pipeline will keep the cost of gas from rising. To the contrary, the price per gallon for gasoline for our cars, while a critically significant political talking point in the next elections, results from a complex interaction of global factors over which we have very little, if any, control. American politicians have a hard time admitting this, since it is the appearance of control and national strength that attracts voters. Instead, the factors which affect the price of oil are entirely global: The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) controls most of the world’s oil, and sets the price of oil. Other factors influencing prices are the amount of strategic oil reserves available, global unrest, changing energy practices elsewhere, rising demand for cars (especially in China), the cost of extraction, here and elsewhere, and isolated events such as the closure of the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, forcing that unfortunate nation to turn to oil. When Iran recently threatened to shut down shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz, price increases predictions ranged from $4.75 and $8.00 a gallon.
The NRDC states, “The truth is that Keystone XL is likely to both decrease the amount of gasoline produced in U.S. refineries for domestic markets, and increase the cost of producing it, leading to even higher prices at the pump.” There is presently a glut in the Midwest which depresses the price of gas there. By building the pipeline so that gas can be sent overseas via Texas, those domestic prices will actually rise.
Energy independence is best achieved through rigorous pursuit of clean, sustainable, non-hazardous energy alternatives to oil. And because we have no controls whatsoever over which countries will eventually receive the refined oil, we can have no certainty about our future security, certainly no more than we have now.
VIDEO: http://www.newsbyrd.com/the-keystone-pipeline-happy-days-for-hummers-or-hybrids/
AND
Tar Sands Oil Extraction - The Dirty Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YkwoRivP17A#!
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