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Posted on 01/04/2012 3:23:22 PM PST by Nachum
A top oil industry official delivered a clear warning to President Obama Wednesday: approve the Keystone XL pipeline or face “huge political consequences.” American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard urged Obama to quickly approve the pipeline, which would carry oil sands crude from Alberta, Canada, to refineries along the Gulf Coast. A payroll tax cut package signed into law by Obama last month includes a GOP-backed provision requiring the president to make a final decision on the pipeline within 60 days.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
I'm getting my popcorn
The list, Ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
I guess he was getting old waiting for Boehner to take it to zero.
Good on’im!
He’s going to start approving stuff all over the place.
if we had any kind of decent President, this would NEVER have even been an issue. How much I despise Obama!!!
You know, if gas prices went up to 4.50/gallon about a week before election day- that might be one way to make a point.
Exactly what it is, a threat.
Until some entities that highly in favor come forward with an ordered campaign, and plenty of financial backing to make this pipeline happen, then it becomes a promise.
Among other things that could be getting under way YESTERDAY, is developing an infrastructure for the distribution of compressed natural gas as a motor fuel, and a well developed scheme for retrofitting the existing fleet of personal and commercial vehicles to use CNG as a motor fuel. This would solve several problems simultaneously.
1. Much lowered emissions, as far less of various pollutants (particulate carbon, unburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide) would be produced.
2. Right now, CNG is selling for approximately half the cost in terms of BTU’s of energy produced, compared to either gasoline or Diesel fuel.
3. The vast stores of this domestic source of energy would go far to eliminate dependence on imported petroleum, and further restore our balance of trade with the world, as well as vastly shifting the potential for economic warfare with countries that have no compunction about depriving the US of any advantage.
4. If it is going to take so many years for new nuclear plants to go online, we need SOMETHING as a transition from dependence on coal and heavier petroleum fractions, because wind and solar are incapable of taking up the slack. Natural gas fired turbines with cogeneration plants using the exhaust heat to drive steam boilers, to produce electrical energy, the TRUE basis of increasing wealth in this country and the world.
Obama doesn’t care about his threats. He considers himself a king not an elected president. If he cared about consequences he wouldn’t do most of the stuff he does.
Hope Gerard has his taxes in order....he could be in for a rough ride through the IRS
Let’s get on with it but with the following important caveat. Absolutely no taking land by eminent domain unless it broadly benefits the USA.
Build the pipeline in non-aquifer areas. If it is done with the use of eminent domain for private enterprise, then private Canadian enterprise must provide benefits to Americans, and require that the oil be sold on the USA market.
Anything else is an outrage to the core belief in private ownership of property. I own it and if you want to buy it then pay the market price or build a pipeline around it.
Otherwise this oil should not be on the global market for the benefit of only oil companies and China. Also require that USA refineries be used in the refining process.
The risk of this pipeline (just as with gas drilling) is to every American. Any gain should be shared between the oil companies and Americans.
How does globalizing our energy resources help our energy independence? It doesn’t unless we have a production surplus and have filled our strategic reserve. Then offer the surplus product to the world. Until then we need cheap energy in the USA to be competitive.
When the choice comes down to a strong USA versus more profits for global oil companies, there is no choice. I support the USA before I support global corporations.
When, as and if CNG becomes an economic alternative, private industry will address the opportunity.
Until then, government needs to stay the hell out of it!!!
I would first like to see where eminent has been used, when running a pipeline you don’t buy the land you pay for a right of way.
What do you think will happen to your heating bill when everything is running on natural gas?
The pipeline’s been held up and might be rejected for a few rich NIMBYs with land in remote Nebraska. ...”property values,” you know. The environmentalist complaints from them are only fallacious arguments, as usual.
We won’t see such outrages so often after the other end of the real estate crash 20 years or so from now (due to the Baby Boomer die-off).
Granted, this would have to be a private initiative, but the government is going to have to remove a LOT of roadblocks to let this happen.
As it happens, there are some parts of the infrastructure already in place, with all the natural gas lines already criscrossing the country, so the basis is already there.
If the machinery for refueling vehicles can be put in place without overwhelming and highly redundant approval protocols being placed as an obstacle, that part would also be streamlined.
As to the vehicles themselves, starting a clean design as a new manufacture would be the best option, but for all the older vehicles now out there, a retrofit to use CNG as a fuel is currently a pretty expensive deal. For instance, there would have to be solid reliable fittings for the storage of CNG on board, controlled means of fueling the engine, and the engine parts (valves and cylinder heads, in particular) would have to be modified to take full advantage of the potential output of CNG as a fuel source.
Compression can be raised quite a bit, because natural gas has an equivalent octane rating of 130+, and also a much hotter burn, which makes demands on exhaust valves and exhaust pipes, requiring either replacement with a more durable part, or engineering the power and exhaust cycle to take advantage of something called “adiabatic cooling”, in which the exhaust temperature is somewhat lowered because of the rapid expansion of the burned fuel-air mixture. Engineers know these terms, and in fact, a number of automobile engines have already been built that take advantage of this fact of thermodynamics, enabling them to run with little or no coolant left in the system.
Doable. And for an economically favorable cost, if the various regulatory agencies do not build up a trumped-up set of regulations to make this enterprise fiscally infeasible.
Look into LPG IMHO that is the fuel for cars.
Check out the Australian Ford "Falcon EcoLPI"
http://www.motoring.com.au/news/2011/large-passenger/ford/falcon/no-export-potential-in-lpi-25821
Google it, it goes faster with lower emissions on LPG than gasoline.
I can't wait for direct injected LPG, some firms in Europe have conversion kits NOW!
.......Alloysteel is your real name T Boon?
Nebraska has tons of pipelines. Are they above ground? Is Keystone to be above ground. I assumed they were buried.
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