That Pipeline

[JohnnySavage]

Makes no sense to YOU.

Montreal has many refineries with excess capacity. Pipeline the shit there and refine it. Ship it out down the Hudson.

Don't they need jobs up in Canada?

Cheaper to send the crude to the gulf area and refine it to finished products there, then ship or distribute the finished products.

 

[thør]

Alberta will get the oil sold, one way or another.

Pipeline north?

 

[trysail]

Alberta will get the oil sold, one way or another.

Pipeline north?

The number of enviro-nutjobs in the U.S. is worrisome. Mainstream media is responsible for the promulgation of quack science and far too many residents of zip codes 02138, 10021 and 20001 have no comprehension of a world outside a radius of 2 miles.


Just like the highway, I couldn't care less if the crazies drive themselves into a tree; the problem arises when they become threats to take me with them.


The foaming-at-the-mouth moonbats ought to be required to spend a winter in a cold, dark NWT cave. That'd either kill 'em or cure 'em.


Not that many people comprehend that a large part of the whole "We're all gonna die from global warming/Thermageddon™ " is being funded by the anxiety/guilt-ridden, limousine liberal, Rockefeller-Pew-MacArthur-Park-Hewlett-Packard-Turner Foundation crowd. These people have nothing better to do than to sit around and provide a justification for their existence by attempting to save the world from itself.







Rockefeller
PewTrust
PewTrusts

 

[trysail]

If you want to know part of the reason the unemployment rate is as high as it is in the U.S., here's a perfect example. This is pure obstructionism at its worst.


The enviro-nutcases have created an enormous brouhaha out of what ought to be routine and a no-brainer.


Make no mistake about it— a not-insignificant proportion of these obstructionists are trust-fund babies who have taken up "world-saving" as a justification for their otherwise purposeless existence. They don't give a damn about people who have to work for a living. They don't give a damn about people who have to worry about their heating and energy bills.



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...ort-enlists-oil-firms-to-u-s-jews-energy.html




Keystone Pipeline Support Enlists Oil Firms to U.S. Jews
By Laura Litvan and Jonathan D. Salant
April 29, 2013

Almost 50 groups representing everything from oil companies to American Jews have stepped up their Washington spending as the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline proves to be a bonanza for lobbyists.

The American Petroleum Institute, a Washington-based oil industry trade group, increased its lobbying spending on all issues, including Keystone, to $2.1 million in the first three months of the year from $1.8 million during the same period a year earlier, Senate records show. The American Jewish Committee lobbying costs rose to $40,000 from $30,000.

They are among 48 groups that disclosed in filings last week that they were lobbying on Calgary-based TransCanada Corp.’s proposed $5.3 billion pipeline, which would bring oil derived from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, to the U.S. Gulf Coast. Others include construction equipment manufacturers such as Deere & Co., labor unions such as the Laborers International Union of North America, and environmental groups such as the League of Conservation Voters -- and the government of Canada.

“Because it’s such a high-profile issue and it has such symbolism, it’s become a full-employment program for K Street,” said Bill Allison, editorial director at the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based watchdog. Many lobbyists have offices on K Street in the District of Columbia.

Oil Companies
All but two of the groups -- the League of Conservation Voters and Greenpeace -- appear to be in support of the pipeline. That includes oil companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Valero Energy Corp., which all registered as lobbying on the issue, according to the disclosure reports filed with the U.S. Senate. All own refineries in the Gulf Coast that could benefit from the Keystone oil, according to Oil Change International, a Washington-based advocacy group that opposes the pipeline.

Some of the top lobbying firms in the U.S. are involved. Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP counts Shell among its clients. Podesta Group Inc. lobbies for BP PLC. The BGR Group lobbies for Chevron Corp.

“The vast array of lobbyists engaged on Keystone owes partly to the immense geographic and policy-topic spread of the pipeline,” said Rogan Kersh, a lobbying expert and provost of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. “Many interest groups can’t afford to let a major issue like this go by without putting their oar in.”

The pipeline “runs across a large swath of the U.S., and it engages constituents from both private and public-advocacy sectors: engineering, construction, environmental, wildlife, energy, transportation, and many others,” Kersh said.

‘Vast Array’
In addition, the president’s inaugural committee received millions of dollars in contributions from corporations and unions lobbying on Keystone, Federal Election Commission filings show.

Chevron gave $1 million while Exxon Mobil contributed $250,000. Four unions donated a total of $1.1 million: the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the laborers.

Other advocates that have registered to lobby for the pipeline include the American Jewish Committee, better known for its support of the state of Israel and on behalf of Jews worldwide.

Reduce Dependence
Keystone would help reduce “U.S. dependence on oil from hostile or unstable foreign sources,” said Kenneth Bandler, a spokesman for the New York-based committee. “The Keystone XL pipeline is vital toward strengthening America’s energy security, and also important for our relations with Canada, our dependable, democratic ally and neighbor.”

Obama sided with Nebraska’s Republican governor, David Heineman, and initially rejected the pipeline because its original route took it through the state’s Sand Hills region, a national natural landmark. TransCanada shifted the route and filed a new application for approval, which is under review by the State Department, which is involved because the pipeline crosses an international border. A decision is expected by the end of the year.

Advocates and opponents continue to hire lobbyists, hold rallies and send letters to convince the administration to make a final decision in their favor.

Alberta Lobbying
The Canadian province of Alberta hired two firms in March, Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti Inc. and Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications Inc., to promote Keystone, according to Justice Department filings. Bruce Mehlman is a veteran of President George W. Bush’s administration; Alex Vogel formerly worked for then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican; and David Castagnetti was the congressional liaison for current Secretary of State John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.

Rasky Baerlein’s chairman is Larry Rasky, who served as a spokesman for Vice President Joe Biden’s two presidential campaigns. An associate vice president, Ron Eckstein, formerly wrote speeches for Nevada Democratic Senator Harry Reid, the current majority leader.

Alberta Premier Alison Redford has made four trips to Washington to lobby on Keystone. Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall has also visited.

The Canadian government is also lobbying, though its efforts have been hindered by a labor dispute involving its diplomats. They’re not working more than the 7.5 hours required by their contracts nor answering phones after 5 p.m. EDT, according to Tim Edwards, president of the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers.

Getting ‘Yes’
The president of the petroleum institute, Jack Gerard, told Bloomberg Radio on April 23 that he believed Obama would approve the pipeline this year following a new environmental study.

“We’re working to get the president to ‘yes,’ whatever it takes,” said John Kerekes, midwest regional director for API. “The process will be inside baseball, and inside the administration. It’s a different lobbying approach altogether.”

Unions supporting the project as a way to create jobs were rallying at AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington April 24.

“This is about making sure the president and the State Department evaluate this based on the actual record,” said David Mallino, the laborers’ union legislation director. “The record is clear that this is in the national interest.”

The pipeline project has vaulted to the top of the list of priorities for the union, he said. It could employ “several thousand laborers” through two construction seasons, he said.

20 Jobs
Estimates for construction and manufacturing employment range from 2,500 to 20,000, depending on assumptions of how much of the project’s budget will be spent in the U.S. According to State Department estimates, the number of full-time jobs once the pipeline is built could be as few as 20.

Environmentalists still hope to scuttle the project. They filed more than 1 million critical comments with the U.S. State Department and have run ads opposing the pipeline.

“It’s increasingly clear that this pipeline simply is not in our national interest and we continue to hope the president will reject it,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, a senior vice president for government affairs at the Washington-based League of Conservation Voters, whose home page prominently features a picture of some of the thousands of anti-pipeline demonstrators marching in Washington in February as it exhorts visitors to “Stop the dangerous Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.”




http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...ort-enlists-oil-firms-to-u-s-jews-energy.html

 

[BoyNextDoor]

Global warming

 

[phrodeau]

If you want to know part of the reason the unemployment rate is as high as it is in the U.S., here's a perfect example. This is pure obstructionism at its worst.


The enviro-nutcases have created an enormous brouhaha out of what ought to be routine and a no-brainer.


Make no mistake about it— a not-insignificant proportion of these obstructionists are trust-fund babies who have taken up "world-saving" as a justification for their otherwise purposeless existence. They don't give a damn about people who have to work for a living. They don't give a damn about people who have to worry about their heating and energy bills.



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...ort-enlists-oil-firms-to-u-s-jews-energy.html




Keystone Pipeline Support Enlists Oil Firms to U.S. Jews
By Laura Litvan and Jonathan D. Salant
April 29, 2013

Didn't read it, did you? Or do you think the unemployment rate will drop substantially with the addition of twenty jobs?

According to State Department estimates, the number of full-time jobs once the pipeline is built could be as few as 20.

 

[coastal-boy]

Didn't read it, did you? Or do you think the unemployment rate will drop substantially with the addition of twenty jobs?

reading is a higher level skill...


It is tar sand...fucking shit oil used for shit products. Let Europe and Asia have it.

http://www.oilsands.alberta.ca/oiluses.html Here is Alberta's PR on it

 

[Peregrinator]

reading is a higher level skill...


It is tar sand...fucking shit oil used for shit products. Let Europe and Asia have it.

http://www.oilsands.alberta.ca/oiluses.html Here is Alberta's PR on it

For some people, personal wealth is the highest good. Nothing else matters.

 

[coastal-boy]

For some people, personal wealth is the highest good. Nothing else matters.

There is nothing in it for us. If Canada wants to ship it through our country, make it worth our time so that when the pipeline leaks, we aren't the one footing the bill. It really is about economics. Buy a barrel of high-grade crude and refine gas cheaper. Buy shit oil and it costs more. What can be done with it? Well...we can pave roads...seems to me we have our own tar sands for that.

 

[coastal-boy]

http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c1220.html

Simple solution....make it worth our time Canada

 

[trysail]

For some people, personal wealth is the highest good. Nothing else matters.

Here's a simple experiment you can try at home:

do without.​

We'll look forward to your report (the only question, of course, is: how will you transmit it if you're dead from hypothermia?)

 

[trysail]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...fter-report-dismisses-bitumen-spill-risk.html



Keystone Gains After Report Dismisses Bitumen Spill Risk

By Edward Welsch and Jim Snyder
June 25, 2013

Heavy crude oil to be carried by the proposed Keystone XL pipeline poses no greater risk of a spill than other types of oil, the National Research Council said in a report.

The report disputes arguments made by Keystone opponents that diluted bitumen, a tar-like substance mined in Alberta’s oil sands, is more corrosive than conventional crude oil and is more likely to create ruptures and oil spills in pipelines.

“There have been several studies to look at this over the years, but none that have been as credible and comprehensive as the NAS study,” Greg Stringham, vice president of markets and oil sands for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said in a telephone interview from Calgary. “It does provide a very definitive conclusion.”

The study may also bolster the case for other pipelines to carry oil derived from Canadian tar sands, he said.

The review of spills “did not find any causes of pipeline failure unique to the transport of diluted bitumen,” according to a statement from the council, part of the National Academy of Sciences that advises the U.S. government on science policy.

‘Nothing Extraordinary’
“There’s nothing extraordinary about pipeline shipments of diluted bitumen to make them more likely than other crude oils to cause releases,” Mark Barteau, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Michigan, said in a statement accompanying the report released today. Barteau was the chairman of the committee that wrote the report.

The State Department is reviewing TransCanada Corp.’s (TRP) application to build the $5.3 billion link between Alberta and Steele City, Nebraska, where the pipeline would link to a project under construction to carry the oil to refineries in the U.S. Gulf Coast. A decision is possible later this year.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration, a part of the U.S. Transportation Department, requested the council’s report. Congress directed the department to study transporting diluted bitumen in a 2012 pipeline safety law.

“Dilbit” has been transported in the U.S. for 30 years, according to the report. The U.S. has about 55,000 miles (88,500 kilometers) of oil transmission lines. Pipeline spills ranged from 80 to 120 a year from 2002 to 2011, according to the study. Any spill releasing 5 gallons or more is reported.

Enbridge, Exxon
The Keystone proposal, along with spills such as Enbridge Inc.’s Michigan rupture in July 2010 and a more recent incident on an Exxon Mobil Corp. line in Mayflower, Arkansas, have led environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council to oppose shipping bitumen by pipeline because they say doing so carries greater risk.

A February 2011 report by the New York City-based NRDC said said spills were more likely because bitumen is acidic and moves through pipelines at higher temperatures than other oils, increasing the risk of corrosion. The National Academy of Sciences report contradicts the NRDC’s research.

Anthony Swift, an NRDC lawyer and an author of the report, said questions remain about higher risks from external corrosion at higher temperatures, as suggested in a 1993 study of California pipelines carrying heavy crudes. Bitumen also may inflict more damage on the environment, especially in waterways, from a spill, he said.

‘Limited Scope’
“It does answer some questions, there’s no question about that, and I’m not criticizing the work that the National Academy of Sciences did, but I am commenting on the the very limited scope of the study,” Swift said in a telephone interview from Washington.

Oil and gas pipelines today reach temperatures of about 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Celsius), “which is about the temperature of the hot water lines in your house,” Barteau said in a press conference today.

The council found the 1993 California study wasn’t “directly applicable” to today’s pipelines, which have modern coatings and protection from corrosion, Barteau said.

The bitumen is diluted with lighter oils to lower its viscosity in the pipeline.
The alleged corrosive properties of bitumen is one argument made by opponents of Keystone. Environmental groups including the San Francisco-based Sierra Club also argue the pipeline will encourage development of the oil sands.

Gas Emissions
Oil sands release 8 percent to 37 percent more greenhouse gases during production and use than conventional oil, according to the Pembina Institute, a Calgary-based non-profit research and advocacy group.

Oil sands production is forecast to more than double to 5.2 million barrels a day by 2030 from 1.8 million currently, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers said in its annual forecast released June 5.

Canada is increasingly reliant on revenue from oil. Energy products were the nation’s fastest-growing export over the past 20 years, increasing to 23 percent of all shipments, from 9 percent in 1993, according to Statistics Canada.

The State Department’s draft environmental analysis said Keystone won’t increase climate-change risks because the oil sands will be developed even without the project. The Environmental Protection Agency criticized the draft analysis, and asked the state Department to conduct a fuller review.

Critics also say that, once spilled, bitumen is tougher to remove. Unlike conventional crude, bitumen sinks in water rather than floating on the surface where it can be skimmed off.

In October, the EPA said Enbridge must do more to clean a spill in Michigan’s Kalamazoo River from a pipeline rupture.



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...fter-report-dismisses-bitumen-spill-risk.html

 

[RobDownSouth]

Here's a simple experiment you can try at home:

do without.​

We'll look forward to your report (the only question, of course, is: how will you transmit it if you're dead from hypothermia?)

We've done quite well without the Keystone pipeline, your incessant whining to the contrary nothwithstanding.

 

[Ajax_Prime]

I'm not going to read every page of this thread, just caught the latest addition.

First thing.
You are all assuming that "OIL" is a homogenous commodity, like water. It's not. I can think of at least 26 different grades of crude, and each and every refinery is optimized to take a certain blend or cocktail. That blend may be 3 parts heavy sour, 1 part medium sweet, and 1 part light sweet. It may be something completely different. The point being, that if you put in a different blend, the refinery operates at sub-optimal capacity. You may get more light distillates, and less of the heavy stuff, and vice versa. As a corporation, if your multi billion dollar asset is not operating efficiently, you might as well light money on fire. The reason why XL is being routed to the Gulf Coast is because refineries along the Gulf Coast are optimized to process heavy and sour crudes, which they have historically received from places like Venezuela.

Refineries along the East and West Coasts of North America have traditionally cooked imported, lighter, sweeter, crudes. They don't operate well at all on the heavy shit. This really wasn't a problem price wise until a few years ago, as they could buy it at a price cheaper (Brent) than West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark for the New York Mercantile crude contract. Brent is the benchmark for the rest of the world. It became a big problem once demand in emerging markets (China, India, etc) started to ramp up. These emerging markets started buying up the cheap Brent crude, but production did not ramp up to keep pace. Suddenly, Brent started trading at a premium to WTI, and all the refineries along the coasts became non-competitive and economic black holes. Several have been sold.

So essentially, you people on the coasts had it pretty good until that happened. Now the worm has turned. Life sucks, doesn't it?

Second thing.
You all are trained to think, just pipe it wherever it needs to go...make it happen. It doesn't work that way either. There are a limited number of pipelines, they typically run North/South, and they're at capacity. It was cheaper to import foreign oil by ship to supply coastal refineries, rather than pay for pipelines running from the interior of the continent, so none got built. NOBODY wants a brand spanking new pipeline running through their backyard these days, do they? So a lot of crude is being brought down and over by rail.

Funny thing that Warren Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway own the BNSF Railroad...he's a big Obama supporter, and XL got hung up along the way. Coincidence?

Lastly, statistically there is zero doubt that moving crude by pipeline is the SAFEST method. It is not even close. So think of that every time you post a link to a leaky Enbridge, Kinder Morgan, or TransCanada pipe story.

Third thing.
The Canadians were muy pissed off by Obama's little exercise. They would really like to sell their crude to America, but if America doesn't want it, the Chinese are perfectly willing to pay for it, and help subsidize the pipeline needed to get it to the Pacific coast. They'll even pay a higher price than America will. Either way, that shit is going to get produced. So your pollution numbers will be the same either way. Probably worse, as the Chinese do not have as stringent environmental regulations as the U.S. does.

That being said, Northern Gateway, and the proposed capacity increase for TransMountain are not slam dunks. The terrain is brutal, and B.C. and the First Nations are putting up a fight, aka, holding their hands out for some money.

 

[trysail]

I'm not going to read every page of this thread, just caught the latest addition.

First thing.
You are all assuming that "OIL" is a homogenous commodity, like water. It's not. I can think of at least 26 different grades of crude, and each and every refinery is optimized to take a certain blend or cocktail. That blend may be 3 parts heavy sour, 1 part medium sweet, and 1 part light sweet. It may be something completely different. The point being, that if you put in a different blend, the refinery operates at sub-optimal capacity. You may get more light distillates, and less of the heavy stuff, and vice versa. As a corporation, if your multi billion dollar asset is not operating efficiently, you might as well light money on fire. The reason why XL is being routed to the Gulf Coast is because refineries along the Gulf Coast are optimized to process heavy and sour crudes, which they have historically received from places like Venezuela.

Refineries along the East and West Coasts of North America have traditionally cooked imported, lighter, sweeter, crudes. They don't operate well at all on the heavy shit. This really wasn't a problem price wise until a few years ago, as they could buy it at a price cheaper (Brent) than West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark for the New York Mercantile crude contract. Brent is the benchmark for the rest of the world. It became a big problem once demand in emerging markets (China, India, etc) started to ramp up. These emerging markets started buying up the cheap Brent crude, but production did not ramp up to keep pace. Suddenly, Brent started trading at a premium to WTI, and all the refineries along the coasts became non-competitive and economic black holes. Several have been sold.

So essentially, you people on the coasts had it pretty good until that happened. Now the worm has turned. Life sucks, doesn't it?

Second thing.
You all are trained to think, just pipe it wherever it needs to go...make it happen. It doesn't work that way either. There are a limited number of pipelines, they typically run North/South, and they're at capacity. It was cheaper to import foreign oil by ship to supply coastal refineries, rather than pay for pipelines running from the interior of the continent, so none got built. NOBODY wants a brand spanking new pipeline running through their backyard these days, do they? So a lot of crude is being brought down and over by rail.

Funny thing that Warren Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway own the BNSF Railroad...he's a big Obama supporter, and XL got hung up along the way. Coincidence?

Lastly, statistically there is zero doubt that moving crude by pipeline is the SAFEST method. It is not even close. So think of that every time you post a link to a leaky Enbridge, Kinder Morgan, or TransCanada pipe story.

Third thing.
The Canadians were muy pissed off by Obama's little exercise. They would really like to sell their crude to America, but if America doesn't want it, the Chinese are perfectly willing to pay for it, and help subsidize the pipeline needed to get it to the Pacific coast. They'll even pay a higher price than America will. Either way, that shit is going to get produced. So your pollution numbers will be the same either way. Probably worse, as the Chinese do not have as stringent environmental regulations as the U.S. does.

That being said, Northern Gateway, and the proposed capacity increase for TransMountain are not slam dunks. The terrain is brutal, and B.C. and the First Nations are putting up a fight, aka, holding their hands out for some money.

☝​

★★★★★

​

Mein Gott! It's a frickin' miracle. There's actually somebody around here who understands what's going on.

 

[thør]

What of the other pipelines?

 

[trysail]

You may not like it but it happens to be the truth:

...we see that the claims by the opponents of the pipeline that they are trying to “protect the environment” are simply not true. If they were really concerned about the environment, they’d want the Keystone XL pipeline expansion. It is much more dangerous to the environment to move the Alberta heavy crude by railroad tank car than by pipeline … and the tragedy in Canada is an excellent example of why...

PS—In any case, if the pipeline is blocked, the Alberta heavy crude will still be burned, either shipped to China, or shipped to the US and Buffett will be even richer, or burned in Canada, but it will be burned. That’s the crazy part—the opposition to the pipeline, even if successful, will achieve nothing … welcome to the crazy world of modern environmental NGOs and their followers …

-Willis Eschenbach​

 

[trysail]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...purs-rail-versus-pipelines-debate-on-oil.html




Quebec Disaster Spurs Rail-Versus-Pipelines Debate on Oil
By Jeremy van Loon and Gerrit De Vynck
July 8, 2013

A train disaster that killed five people in Quebec promises to touch off debate over the safety of shipping crude oil by rail or pipelines such as TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL.

As authorities began investigating the explosion of refinery-bound tank cars hauled by Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway Ltd., Quebec’s Green Party demanded stricter regulations and an energy industry association predicted tough scrutiny ahead for rail carriers.

“People think rail is costless until something like this happens,” said John Stephenson, fund manager with First Asset Investment Management Inc., said from Toronto, where he helps manage C$2.70 billion ($2.65 billion). “This is another data point that shows how much costlier and riskier rail is compared to pipelines and will probably move Canada closer to having an energy strategy.”

The July 6 accident forced the evacuation of 2,000 near the town of Lac-Megantic as Montreal, Maine & Atlantic moved oil to Irving Oil Corp.’s Saint John refinery in New Brunswick. The cargo was part of Canadian producers’ growing use of rail amid tight pipeline capacity.

“It’s been a real shame that a lot of the public and especially the activists have pushed the public to sway so much from pipelines which are likely much, much safer over time,” said Arthur Salzer, chief executive officer of Northland Wealth Management, which oversees C$225 million. “It is going to be something that’s going to weigh on the public’s mind.”

Regulators’ Decisions
Canada shipped about C$73 billion ($69.3 billion) of oil exports last year, mainly to the U.S. With the industry waiting for a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline by President Barack Obama and from Canadian regulators on approval of Enbridge Inc. (ENB)’s Northern Gateway route through British Columbia, more shipments by rail are being planned.

“There will be some very hard questions that will be asked about why an unmanned, parked train moved,” said John Herron, president of trade group Atlantica Centre for Energy in Saint John, New Brunswick. He said that attention is “more than appropriate” with plans in the works to increase oil-offloading capacity on the eastern seaboard by 840,000 barrels a day.

Without the Keystone XL, designed to carry 830,000 barrels a day, rail shipments of Canadian crude would rise an additional 42 percent by 2017, according to an April 2 report by RBC Capital Markets. Cenvous Energy Inc. plans to boost rail shipments fivefold to 30,000 barrels a day by the end of 2014 to help reach coastal markets.

Pipeline Argument
“Pipeline companies will use this to point out the advantages and safety records of pipelines,” said Bob Schulz, a professor at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business, in an interview. “It gives those companies an additional point to support their argument.”

The Natural Resources Defense Council, a Washington-based environmental group, said it was inaccurate to assert that the Keystone XL pipeline was “something that can save us from oil on rail.”

“Rail will continue, and its safety problems can’t be ignored,” Anthony Swift, an energy analyst with the group, said in a telephone interview.

Railroads have gained from rising oil shipments. Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd.’s average revenue per car rose 12 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, largely because of increased oil traffic, Chief Marketing Officer Jane O’Hagan said on an April 24 conference call.

Index Beaters
Canadian Pacific and Canadian National Railway Co. are both outperforming the country’s benchmark S&P/Toronto Stock Exchange Composite Index this year, with gains of 26 percent and 15 percent through July 5. The index fell 2.4 percent in the same period.

Canadian Pacific has had half a dozen derailments this year, including leaks on March 27 in Minnesota and April 3 in Ontario that spilled a combined 757 barrels, a spokesman, Ed Greenberg, said on May 22. An accident in May near Jansen, Saskatchewan, spilled 545 barrels of oil.

Canadian Pacific declined to comment on crude-by-rail shipments, Greenberg said yesterday in an e-mailed response to questions.

In 2005, Canadian National Railway spilled 1.3 million liters of bunker fuel into Wabamun Lake, Alberta, west of the provincial capital Edmonton, when 43 cars derailed on the railway’s main line through western Canada.

Trout-Fishing River
More recently, a Canadian Pacific train carrying diluent used to dilute oil-sands bitumen almost collapsed into the Bow River, one of Canada’s best trout-fishing rivers that runs through downtown Calgary, where the carrier is based. Floods in that city damaged the century-old bridge that the rail cars were traveling over.

Transporting crude oil by rail results in almost three times the number of spills compared with pipelines, according to the Washington-based Association of American Railroads.

Rail transport also costs three times as pipeline shipments, along with higher risks, Enbridge CEO Al Monaco said during a conference in March in Houston.

Jean Cloutier, interim leader of the Green Party of Quebec, said the province needs rules to ease the danger of train disasters.

“It is also important that we act quickly to better monitor and regulate corporations” that transport hazardous cargos by rail, road, water or pipelines, Cloutier said yesterday in an e-mailed statement.

Safety Rates
Railroads and pipelines both deliver more than 99 percent of products without incident. U.S. pipelines carried 474.6 billion gallons of crude and petroleum products in 2012 and reported 2.3 million gallons spilled, an effective rate of 0.0005 percent, according to the Association of Oil Pipelines.

Over the entire decade ending with 2012, railroads hauled 11.2 billion gallons of crude with 95,256 gallons spilled, the majority from just one 2008 accident in Oklahoma that accounted for 81,103 gallons, according to the rail association.

“I’m not sure this accident is the tipping point yet,” said University of Calgary’s Schulz, referring to the disaster in Quebec. “We probably need to see a barge sink in the Mississippi River or a major derailment in British Columbia before people really change their minds about moving oil by rail.”




http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...purs-rail-versus-pipelines-debate-on-oil.html

 

[Peregrinator]

Here's a simple experiment you can try at home:

do without.​

We'll look forward to your report (the only question, of course, is: how will you transmit it if you're dead from hypothermia?)

Oh, look, a false dichotomy. Logic just is not your strong suit is it?

"Money for me or death for you!"


Brilliant.

 

[trysail]

Well, well, well. Look what a free market pricing system does.

Not only does nature abhor morons and fill vacuums, she also hates the mispricings that create arbitrage opportunities.


_____ Brent crude price
_____ WTI price
_____ Difference between Brent price and WTI price

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=krP


​

 

[trysail]

I'm not going to read every page of this thread, just caught the latest addition.

First thing.
You are all assuming that "OIL" is a homogenous commodity, like water. It's not. I can think of at least 26 different grades of crude, and each and every refinery is optimized to take a certain blend or cocktail. That blend may be 3 parts heavy sour, 1 part medium sweet, and 1 part light sweet. It may be something completely different. The point being, that if you put in a different blend, the refinery operates at sub-optimal capacity. You may get more light distillates, and less of the heavy stuff, and vice versa. As a corporation, if your multi billion dollar asset is not operating efficiently, you might as well light money on fire. The reason why XL is being routed to the Gulf Coast is because refineries along the Gulf Coast are optimized to process heavy and sour crudes, which they have historically received from places like Venezuela.

Refineries along the East and West Coasts of North America have traditionally cooked imported, lighter, sweeter, crudes. They don't operate well at all on the heavy shit. This really wasn't a problem price wise until a few years ago, as they could buy it at a price cheaper (Brent) than West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark for the New York Mercantile crude contract. Brent is the benchmark for the rest of the world. It became a big problem once demand in emerging markets (China, India, etc) started to ramp up. These emerging markets started buying up the cheap Brent crude, but production did not ramp up to keep pace. Suddenly, Brent started trading at a premium to WTI, and all the refineries along the coasts became non-competitive and economic black holes. Several have been sold.

So essentially, you people on the coasts had it pretty good until that happened. Now the worm has turned. Life sucks, doesn't it?

Second thing.
You all are trained to think, just pipe it wherever it needs to go...make it happen. It doesn't work that way either. There are a limited number of pipelines, they typically run North/South, and they're at capacity. It was cheaper to import foreign oil by ship to supply coastal refineries, rather than pay for pipelines running from the interior of the continent, so none got built. NOBODY wants a brand spanking new pipeline running through their backyard these days, do they? So a lot of crude is being brought down and over by rail.

Funny thing that Warren Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway own the BNSF Railroad...he's a big Obama supporter, and XL got hung up along the way. Coincidence?

Lastly, statistically there is zero doubt that moving crude by pipeline is the SAFEST method. It is not even close. So think of that every time you post a link to a leaky Enbridge, Kinder Morgan, or TransCanada pipe story.

Third thing.
The Canadians were muy pissed off by Obama's little exercise. They would really like to sell their crude to America, but if America doesn't want it, the Chinese are perfectly willing to pay for it, and help subsidize the pipeline needed to get it to the Pacific coast. They'll even pay a higher price than America will. Either way, that shit is going to get produced. So your pollution numbers will be the same either way. Probably worse, as the Chinese do not have as stringent environmental regulations as the U.S. does.

That being said, Northern Gateway, and the proposed capacity increase for TransMountain are not slam dunks. The terrain is brutal, and B.C. and the First Nations are putting up a fight, aka, holding their hands out for some money.

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★★★★★

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Mein Gott! It's a frickin' miracle. There's actually somebody around here who understands what's going on.

 

[trysail]

...and now the dumbfucks are bitching about trains.

Yanno— there's a solution to this problem. It's called a PIPELINE.





Oil Trains Raise Concerns In Small Towns, Cities

by The Associated Press
December 19, 201312:36 PM

WOLF POINT, Mont. (AP) — It's tough to miss the trains hauling crude oil out of the Northern Plains. They are growing more frequent by the day, mile-long processions of black tank cars that rumble through wheat fields and towns, along rivers and national parks.

As common as they have become across the U.S. and Canada, officials in dozens of towns and cities where the oil trains travel say they are concerned with the possibility of a major derailment, spill or explosion, while their level of preparation varies widely.

Stoking those fears was the July crash of a crude train from the Bakken oil patch in Lac Megantic, Quebec — not far from the Maine border — that killed 47 people. A Nov. 8 train derailment in rural Alabama where several oil cars exploded reinforced them.

"It's a grave concern," said Dan Sietsema, the emergency coordinator in northeastern Montana's Roosevelt County, where oil trains now pass regularly through the county seat of Wolf Point. "It has the ability to wipe out a town like Wolf Point."

The number of carloads hauled by U.S. railroads has surged in recent years, from 10,840 in 2009 to a projected 400,000 this year.

Despite the increase, the rate of accidents has stayed relatively steady. An Associated Press review of federal hazardous material accident records show most of those incidents involved small quantities of oil.

Railroads say 99.997 percent of hazardous materials shipments reach destinations safely. Representatives said they work hard to prevent accidents and make sure emergency responders are prepared, by training about 20,000 firefighters and others annually.

"It's not something to be afraid of," said Union Pacific CEO Jack Koraleski. He said there isn't a safer option than rail.

Federal officials who oversee railroads said they've responded to the boom in oil trains by beefing up rail car inspections in oil-producing states such as North Dakota. Tougher safety standards are being considered for the tank cars that carry oil.

But the accident records kept by the U.S. Department of Transportation point to the daunting size of that task. Oil trains are now active in virtually every corner of the country, and since 2008, crude releases from rail cars have been reported in 29 states.

The potential for a major accident looms ominously for emergency officials. Urban areas and towns near railroad facilities are better prepared, while rural officials know they may be on their own in the first crucial hours after an accident.

New Castle County, Del., has extensive resources and well-trained firefighters because it is home to an oil refinery and a complex of chemical manufacturing plants.

County emergency management coordinator Dave Carpenter said the industry has worked closely with officials to improve emergency response since an incident in 1984, so he's not especially concerned about the crude oil shipments.

"We're probably one of the more-prepared places in the nation," Carpenter said.

But even in another relatively well-equipped area, like Little Rock, Ark., Pulaski County emergency manager Andy Traffanstedt said he worries that a fiery accident like the one in Quebec could overwhelm firefighters.

"Sometimes things are so catastrophic that you can't ever get ahead of it," he said, even though his county has three hazardous materials teams and a Union Pacific rail yard with more resources nearby.

Trains headed west out of the Bakken oil patch in North Dakota snake their way along the Missouri River and slice through towns large and small before crawling over the Continental Divide at Glacier National Park to reach coastal refineries.

Like spokes on a wheel, others head south to the Gulf, east to New York and Pennsylvania, north into Canada.

One of the first places trains heading west pass through is Wolf Point, an agricultural town of about 2,600 people on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.

On a line historically dominated by grain and freight shipments, crude trains are now a daily sight. Horns announce their approach as locomotives pulling 3 million gallons of crude per shipment pass just a block from the town's business district and only yards from the public high school.

Emergency officials in Montana and beyond generally praised the railroad industry's responsiveness to derailments.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, the dominant railroad in the Bakken, maintains its own hazardous materials emergency crews, totaling more than 220 personnel at 66 sites scattered across the country. The other major railroads take similar precautions and offer specialized training to local firefighters.

Yet corporate responsibility can only do so much, said Sietsema, who noted that the last significant derailment in his county came when a freight train hit a truck at a road crossing.

"Burlington Northern is pretty much Johnny on the spot," he said. "But BN can only control so much."

Like most rural communities, Wolf Point has an all-volunteer fire department. The nearest hazardous materials teams are stationed on the other side of the state, six to eight hours away. There's no containment boom on hand if oil entered one of the Missouri River tributaries crossed by the rail line.

As for controlling an oil-fueled fire, Wolf Point's fire department would use up its supply of specialized foam in a matter of minutes, said Chris Dschaak, Wolf Point's mayor-elect and also secretary-treasurer of the local fire department.

Similar limitations exist for fire departments across the U.S., said Alan Finklestein, a fire marshal in Ohio who conducts hazardous materials training for government agencies and first responders.

He said the problem has been compounded by cutbacks in emergency personnel and training in recent years due to the ailing economy.

Greg Rhoads, a railroad emergency preparedness consultant and former CSX employee, said knowing what rail traffic is passing through a community and understanding the potential risks is crucial to being prepared.

Rhoads said he doesn't think any community could handle a disaster like the one that unfolded in Quebec last July, but every fire department, even small ones, can do some things to prepare and develop a basic plan.

"If you have 10, 15, 20 railcars on fire, it would challenge Denver, Chicago or any major fire department," Rhoads said.

 

[Skiddles2014]

Fuck the pipeline.

 

[trysail]

Fuck the pipeline.

What have you got in mind? The folks in Lac Megantic certainly think pipelines are safer than railroads. What's your preference— and why? Or are you one of the loonies who wants to go back to the Stone Age?

 

[trysail]

...and people wonder why the U.S. economy struggles with unemployment? The nutjobs and fruitcakes who have turned the Keystone pipeline into a really, really stupid crusade are utterly irrational.





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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...n-shows-stopping-keystone-won-t-stop-oil.html

Enbridge’s Pipeline Win Shows Stopping Keystone Won’t Stop Oil

By Jim Efstathiou Jr. and Rebecca Penty
December 20, 2013

Keystone XL backers say the proliferation of alternative projects, such as one to carry tar sands to a Canadian seaport that advanced yesterday, undercuts opponents who claim blocking the pipeline will keep the high-carbon crude in the ground.

Canadian energy regulators yesterday recommended approval with conditions of Enbridge Inc.’s Northern Gateway pipeline, a project that would bring as much as 525,000 barrels a day of oil sands to a port at Kitimat, British Columbia. The recommendation, by the National Energy Board, leaves the final decision up to federal government.

The announcement follows an expansion of rail terminals to haul crude and other proposals, such as one by Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP to almost triple the capacity of a line to Vancouver or TransCanada Corp.’s plan to convert a gas line to oil.

“The fact that there are other routes means that the pipeline isn’t a significant source of emissions,” said Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners LLC, a Washington-based consultant. High-carbon Canadian crude is finding its way to market without Keystone XL, he said in an interview.

President Barack Obama has said he won’t approve TransCanada’s application to build the Keystone line between Alberta’s oil sands and U.S. Gulf Coast refineries if it were found to substantially boost carbon-dioxide emissions, which scientists say are raising the Earth’s temperature.

“To say yes on the terms that the president has established, there have to be other pathways for the crude to get to market,” Book said.

Environmental Flashpoint

Keystone has emerged as a flashpoint in the debate over global warming. Pipeline critics say the project poses a risk to the climate because it would encourage increased production from Alberta’s oil sands, a process that releases more carbon dioxide than the extraction of conventional forms of oil.

Environmental groups such as Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council oppose Keystone and say it would exacerbate global warming.

“Keystone is critical for expansion of tar sands and that remains the case even with the further developments in the existing pipeline proposals,” Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, director of international programs at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in an interview. “If Keystone is rejected, its going to have a significant impact on the expansion plans for tar sands.”

State Department

The U.S. State Department is completing a final report assessing the environmental risks of building the proposed $5.4 billion project. A draft version released in March found that Keystone wouldn’t have a big climate impact because oil sands would be developed even if the administration blocked the project, with the crude moving by rail or other pipelines instead. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and others disputed that conclusion.

Kinder Morgan wants to almost triple the size of its Trans Mountain pipeline from near Edmonton, Alberta, to Vancouver to 890,000 barrels a day, by 2017. TransCanada is considering converting a gas line to oil so it could transport as much as 1.1 million barrels a day of crude to refineries in eastern Canada.

“The State Department is generally right,” Michael McKenna, a Republican strategist and president of MWR Strategies Inc., a Midlothian, Virginia-based lobbying firm, said in an interview. “That oil is going to come to market.”

Other Hurdles

Not all proposals to haul oil sands will come to fruition. Almost a decade after it was proposed, the C$7.9 billion ($7.4 billion) Northern Gateway project still faces opposition from aboriginal groups, including the Yinka Dene Alliance as well as the Haisla and Haida First Nations. In addition, the pipeline is opposed by the New Democratic Party, Canada’s official opposition party. Yesterday’s ruling by the regulators recommended 209 conditions, including assurances the project would not endanger the environment and that the company has an emergency response plan.

The city council in South Portland, Maine, this month voted to place a 180-day moratorium on development related to hauling oil sands by pipeline through the city. Rail transport costs more than pipelines, poses its own safety risks and will lead to 8 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than if Keystone were built, according to the State Department.

Keystone Delays

TransCanada says delays in building the Keystone XL pipeline have resulted in more crude shipments by rail, which creates higher carbon emissions.

``What has actually occurred in the marketplace would corroborate the accuracy of those estimates, where they said rail and other things would allow the oil sands to continue to develop and Keystone wouldn't have any impact on either refining or production,'' TransCanada Chief Executive Officer Russ Girling said yesterday in an interview at Bloomberg’s Toronto office.

World demand for oil won't decrease even if oil-sands production is halted, he said. ``Consumption is where you get GHG emissions and as long as that consumption is met by some barrel, there is no net increase in GHG emissions.’’

If oil-sands production is shut down, the U.S. will import crude from other places such as Venezuela, where emissions associated with crude production and consumption are higher on average than in the oil sands, he said.

Keystone could carry 830,000 barrels of oil a day to U.S. refiners. By comparison, an average of 175,000 barrels of oil were imported by rail each day this year, about 75,000 barrels of it heavy oil, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, an industry group. About 45,000 barrels of oil was shipped to the U.S. daily on average in 2012, according to the group.

Oil-sands producers including MEG Energy Corp. and Cenovus Energy Inc. say they have booked capacity on rail cars in order to work around pipeline bottlenecks.

2008 Application

TransCanada applied for a permit to build Keystone XL in September, 2008. The State Department is reviewing the project because it crosses an international border.

Obama rejected the initial application after officials in Nebraska said the pipeline would imperil a sensitive ecosystem. TransCanada, which is headquartered in Calgary, re-applied in May 2012 with a new route through Nebraska, which has won approval from state officials.

As the environmental review has dragged on, investments in rail cars that carry crude have risen. The capacity of rail terminals to load crude oil in Alberta and Saskatchewan will quadruple by the end of next year to 905,000 barrels a day from 224,000 currently, according to an Aug. 26 report by Calgary investment bank Peters & Co.

“Rail seems to be an option for light sweet crudes,” Casey-Lefkowitz said. “What we’re seeing in practice is that companies aren’t willing to pay the high cost that transporting raw bitumen by rail.”

Climate Change

In their fight against Keystone, opponents have zeroed in on the section of the draft State Department report that concludes the pipeline wouldn’t worsen climate change because the oil would make its way to market anyway, by rail or other means.

NextGen Climate Action, a group funded by billionaire investor and pipeline foe Tom Steyer, sponsored an event in Washington this month designed to rebut that assessment.

“The pipeline changes the economics of this and makes it profitable for people to develop a ton more of it,” Steyer, the founder of Farallon Capital Management LLC, said in an interview. In September, Steyer said he would spend $1 million on an ad campaign against Keystone.

Oil Output

Even if Keystone XL is built, more pipelines and rail cars will be needed to handle the projected growth in oil sands output, according to the Canadian producers group. Canadian production is forecast to grow more than 50 percent to 4.9 million barrels a day by 2020, while U.S. output expands 37 percent to 11.1 million barrels, the International Energy Agency said in its World Energy Outlook in November.

An RBC Capital Markets report in September said that without Keystone, as much as 300,000 barrels of oil a day in development in the oil sands could be delayed. Increased reliance on rail in lieu of the pipeline could benefit companies including Burlington Northern Santa Fe, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., that carry crude to refineries.

“Oil sands are either going to come to market or not come to market on the basis of underlying oil prices,” McKenna said. “Stopping Keystone isn’t going to stop the oil sands.”



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...n-shows-stopping-keystone-won-t-stop-oil.html