If You Don’t Build It, They Will Leave

Seems Canada is tired of waiting – and waiting – for a decision on the Keystone pipeline and has come up with an alternate plan for moving the oil to market. As Bloomberg reports:

It would be Keystone on steroids, more than twice as long and carrying a third more crude. Its end point, a refinery in the blue-collar city of Saint John, New Brunswick, operated by a reclusive Canadian billionaire family, would give Canada’s oil-sands crude supertanker access to the same Louisiana and Texas refineries Keystone was meant to supply.

… 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.

... also prove a blow to the 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.

Finally, since the new pipeline will be built in Canada, the economic benefits from its construction will be felt there.

Keystone was the quickest way to bring the oilsands to market. Since the US didn't want the oil, Canada has looked to alternatives.

Energy East and the Gateway pipeline will solve two problems. The oilsands oil will reach the world market and Canada will be totally energy independent. We will not be importing any more oil. In fact, Canada will become a major oil exporter.

If these two pipelines can be built, Canada will reap all the jobs and all the benefits, including a stream of tax money, that would have gone to the US with Keystone. Keystone might become unnecessary.

Don't think that this oil will now go to the Gulf refineries as originally planned. Europe just took the oilsands off its blacklist. With Russia turning the energy screws and the mid east blowing up, the Euros are going to need a vast new source of oil. Looks like Energy East will ride to the rescue.

Those tankers lining up in Kitimat will be destined for China, the ones lining up in Saint John will be headed for Europe.

Just for interest, understand that there is more oil in the oilsands of Northern Alberta than in all of Saudi Arabia.

The US has shown itself to be a poor trading partner and an unreliable ally in this affair. President Obola again hammers America's standing with its closest neighbor and ally. Good work, Barak!

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