Posted on 11/14/2011 4:31:24 PM PST by Ron C.
Edited on 11/14/2011 4:36:08 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
LINCOLN, Neb. – Days after the Obama administration threatened to delay approval of a planned oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico -- angering unions while appeasing environmentalists -- the company seeking to build the pipeline says it's willing to reroute the project to get it back on track.
TransCanada said Monday evening it will move the planned pipeline out of the environmentally sensitive Sandhills area of Nebraska, and is confident the project will still win approval.
It does however raise an interesting point; that is, I assume envirotard issues trump union support. Or maybe pipeliners are the red-headed stepchildren of unions. Of course envirotard faux heartburn can be selectively applied to just about ANY capitalist endeavor. Thereby being an ace in the hole when nothing else can put roadblocks in front of the free market system. A$$HOLES!!!
“...that’s the way the President of the United States wants it. Can anyone make any sense of this?”
Yes, the evil POS POTUS is anti-American...he wants America to go down the tubes...get rid of this evil POS...
I was talking about sending the crude to China.
Excellent...cui bono? The only question worth asking in politics.
Nebraska is not the culprit here. The state already has over 20,000 miles of pipelines. It's the federal government that's the problem.
Moreover, the XL pipeline is Phase 4 of a 4-phase project. The XL line is being built to a junction with two other Keystone pipelines at Steele City, NE. From there, the oil will move to the Wood River, IL refinery complex (across the river from St. Louis) over a line that was completed a year ago. And it will also move south to Cushing, OK -- the major pipeline junction point in the USA -- from whence it can be sent on to the Texas Gulf Coast...or diverted just about anywhere else in the country.
In other words, Keystone doesn't have the option of re-routing the whole thing. They've already built a system to accept the oil -- and to use it, they've got to get to Steele City, NE.
Sandhill and Nebraska.
No, there actually are sandhills in Nebraska, but it is the Ogalalla aqafer that is the argument in this case, but there already are some twentythree tousand miles of pipelines crossing Nebraska, oil and gas, and this one would only add a couple of hundred more, and it would be state of the art with safety eqipment , this is madness, the primeminister of Canada said this pipeline is a no brainer, so he must have been talking about Obama lol
[stars very bright. . .but they’re brighter in the rocky mountains, camping out at 10,000 ft.]
I lived in Colorado, off and on, for seven years. Your imagery makes my heart pant for those awesome vistas.
Exactly, the pipeline isn’t ‘controversial’ because there’s some pristine ecological reason. It’s controversial for purely political/financial reasons. Cui bono?
TransCanada worked on this route for years. All the approvals up to this level have been made. They have purchased most of the land. Pipe is actually in place in warehouses along the route, ready to go. This is truly a "shovel ready" project, except no government money is involved. It would take two years to build the pipeline.
It will now be delayed at least a year, and several years if they have to re-route it. The oil has to flow. It is apparent that it is going to flow west to Asia, not south to the US.
Look at the code word - environmentally sensitive - like somehow it is so fragile that it won’t ever recover. Have liberals ever heard of fire, ice, wind, or storms? How did nature get so far without us to protect it?
Haven’t pipelines been a net, net benefit to wildlife? We’ve become inured to the belief that every act mankind takes is fundamentally harmful to the environment.
If a worm encounters a balled up plastic bag how is that different then a chunk of granite? Nature adapts. Extinction is normal. The earth is very, very old. That’s the fundamental science behind it.
The attempt to preserve the world as it is, now that’s unnatural.
Sorry, my stupid.
Keystone Pipeline System
http://www.transcanada.com/docs/Key_Projects/keystone.pdf
Commercial Information
The first leg of the Keystone Pipeline from Hardisty, Alta. to Wood River and Patoka, Ill. has capacity of 435,000 barrels per day.
Phase II of the project to Cushing, Okla. increases capacity to 591,000 barrels per day.
Keystone XL will add an additional 500,000 barrels per day in 2013.
When completed, Keystone XL will increase the commercial design of the Keystone Pipeline System from 591,000 barrels per day to approximately 1.1 million barrels per day.
And they are already running with domestic oil.
There are four refineries in Montana. Their maximum capacity is 187,600 BPD.
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_cap1_dcu_SMT_a.htm
Wyoming has 6 refineries, total capacity 166,100 BPD.
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_cap1_dcu_SWY_a.htm,/a>
So how are you going to put an additional 500,000 BPD of petroleum through those refineries? Who are you going to sell it to? How much expansions will you need of the refined product pipelines? (hint, you will need to grow them also about 500,000 BPD)
The refineries on the Gulf Coast have capacity but many are running on imported oil from overseas. We can replace that with petroleum from North America with the cost of building new refineries.
Remember this? The reason that pipeline blew was 1960s haste coupled with 21st Century management cheating on maintenance and inspection costs. It happens.
Having built large processing equipment and installed it in multiple factories, I have a healthy respect for Murphy but even more for management cutting corners. That said, the reason I asked is that I take the prospect of terrorism against pipelines seriously and so should you.
Unlike ANY of your peers, I've taken on a project reversing over two hundred years of mismanagement in a grassland with a sandy soil (220 years, and three months to be precise :-). It took me twenty years to get as far as we have (an unprecedented restoration) and I'm still not done. We perturbed it with nitrogen this year to activate the weed seed bank to see if it had been purged and we're still not there. When you damage a native system, it is particularly susceptible to expensive long term weed problems. When chemistries in the ppb range can screw up a biological process, and having respect for the decay rate it would take to remove a heavy-bodied blob by erosive and photochemical processes, how far surfactants might go in sand, and how dependent this nation is on its largest aquifer, one screw-up or an act of terrorism can take a long time and be very expensive to fix on an actuarial basis. An attack against a pipeline would not be small. one has to ask about the cost of the consequences and reach a rational means of mitigating that set of risks.
No plan is without risk. It is when one assesses competing risks that the optimal choice becomes clear. The job is obviously to reach a cost-effective minimum. The problem in any business is that when the risk is "somebody else's fault" an "Act of God" or whatever, that risk gets discounted and you know it. I am not a fan of socializing risks because SOMEBODY HAS TO PAY FOR THEM, so expecting Uncle Sugar to pony up if there is a problem is a non-starter with me.
Assess all the risks, compare the costs, and make a decision. I'm not arguing against the pipeline, I'm asking about an optimal choice, all risks taken properly under consideration, including terrorism. There's a war on you know.
I'm not claiming that pipelines never have a failure. They have, and multiple times.
But they have a better history than any of the other methods of transportation comparing volumes/distance transported versus spill.
And we have had spills, and the aquifers have not be trashed.
I was just wondering if this line had to capacity to handle an additional 500 to 900 bbl/d.
Of this I have no doubt.
And we have had spills, and the aquifers have not be trashed.
Good. All I am asking is for a full assessment without socialized costs.
Look at it this way: An agent of the American taxpayer, the FAA, told the airlines that it was just dandy to install cheesy cockpit doors on airplanes so that they could install an extra first class seat. That meant that the taxpayer owned the risk of terrorists blowing through said doors. Three thousand dead in New York would argue that it was a bad deal, a deal made because the taxpayer owned the risk.
It is not until all risks are accounted, internalized, and weighed objectively that a transaction can truly be optimized. So, if the insurers of the pipeline company were fully accountable for all costs associated with the risks of ownership, including the risk of terrorism and the cost of restoration, then I would have no problem with any of it. I just have little confidence that this is actually the case.
All existing lines from the Canada and Bakken area are running at capacity. Multiple lines are being planned to add capacity but there exists a significant bottleneck today. Oil is being shipped by rail to move more product but that is more expensive.
North Dakota Pipeline Authority
Annual Report
July 1, 2010 – June 30, 2011
https://www.dmr.nd.gov/pipeline/assets/pdf/08262011/NDPA%20Annual%20Report%2010-11.pdf
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