Honestly I’m kinda surprised that Canada hasn’t just told us to go pack sand and run the pipeline to Vancouver. The Chinese have already made it clear they would like to be in on something like that.
As it turns out, it is more likely that the oil would be piped east to St. Johns, NB instead of west to BC for tanker export. Less expensive and fewer complications both technical and political. For much of the east coast route, there are existing underused pipelines in place that would be repurposed so fewer miles of new pipeline are required compared to the west to BC option. The main hurdles that I have heard of are in Quebec regarding some side pipelines to go to Quebec located destinations and infrastructure expansion in St. Johns, which will be tangled up with the Irving Oil facilities there, which include an existing supertanker port.
Export oil from St. Johns would go to buyers on the USA east and gulf coasts and to Europe. Almost certainly shipping cost would be too great to go to Asia via supertanker around Cape Horn.
“Honestly I’m kinda surprised that Canada hasn’t just told us to go pack sand and run the pipeline to Vancouver. The Chinese have already made it clear they would like to be in on something like that.”
Canada is waiting to see the outcome of our next Presidential Elections in 2016. To see if the U.S. is truly a lost cause or not.
The TransMountain Pipeline, owned by Kinder Morgan, already moves oil and products to that area, even across the border into the US. It is being expanded. It is needed in addition to the Keystone XL, not in place of.
PROPOSED EXPANSION
http://www.transmountain.com/proposed-expansion
The proposed expansion, if approved, would create a twinned pipeline that would increase the nominal capacity of the system from 300,000 barrels per day, to 890,000 barrels per day.