Tar Sands

[cowboyangel]

Corporate Impunity. What a crock. Citing the failure of Solyndria as an excuse....cheap shot. Let's continue to kill the planet with carbon emissions.




Keystone pipeline: Why the oil sands conduit will get built


By Steve Hargreaves @CNNMoney October 8, 2011: 10:00 AM ET
Actress Daryl Hannah protests the Keystone pipeline this summer. But jobs, money and oil will likely win out over environmental concerns as a decision on the controversial pipeline looms.

Actress Daryl Hannah protests the Keystone pipeline this summer. But jobs, money and oil will likely win out over environmental concerns as a decision on the controversial pipeline looms.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Jobs and energy prices will ultimately push the Obama administration to approve the controversial Keystone pipeline, analysts say, despite the protests and environmental concerns over expanding production from Canada's oil sands.

Stretching 1,600 miles from Alberta, Canada, to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast, the Keystone pipeline project would boost U.S. consumption from the Canadian oil sands, now more than 1 million barrels a day, by about 50%.
map-keystone-pipeline.03.jpg

Because the pipeline crosses an international boarder, it needs approval from the State Department to get built. Over the last several weeks the State Department has held a series of public hearings on the matter, including one Friday in Washington, D.C., where both supporters and critics held dueling press conferences.

Protesters have been getting themselves arrested for weeks in front of the White House, and environmentalists have been urging the administration to reject the pipeline. They fear it will leak, and they oppose expanding production from the oil sands, which takes a heavier toll on the environment than traditional oil wells.

But analysts say their efforts will probably be for naught.

"We still anticipate State will approve the project by year end," Christine Tezak, an energy and environmental policy analyst at asset management firm Robert W. Baird & Co., wrote in a research note earlier this week. "The White House will cite national energy security, trade with a close neighbor, new jobs, and historically strict permitting requirements as justification for approval."

The environment: Wringing oil out of oil sands is a more intense process than tapping it through a conventional oil well.
U.S. to decide the Keystone XL pipeline's fate

All told, oil from oil sands produces between 5% to 30% more greenhouse gas emissions than traditional crude, largely because of the additional energy needed to heat up the tar-like substance to get it flowing like regular oil. The process also uses vast amounts of water.

In addition, much of the oil sands are mined like coal -- in massive open pits. These pits can leech toxins into waterways and are wildly unsightly when seen from any vantage point. It's hard to understate how large these operations are -- if clustered together, oil sands developments in Alberta would occupy an area the size of Rhode Island.

Companies producing oil sands, including ExxonMobil (XOM, Fortune 500), Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA), BP (BP) and Canada's Suncor (SU), have gotten better about mitigating some of the impacts, but problems remain.

The payoff: It's the economics that are likely to win the day.

TransCanada (TRP), the company trying to build the pipeline, estimates the project would create 13,000 construction jobs and 7,000 additional jobs making the steel, pumps and other necessary equipment.

The company estimates that over the project's life, which it generously pegs at 100 years, $20 billion will be pumped into the U.S. economy and $5 billion added to government coffers.

Supporters point out that the while the oil might be dirtier environmentally, it's from a more politically stable country: Canada is generally thought to have stronger human rights laws and a more transparent government than many other places the U.S. gets its oil.

Then there's the oil itself. The pipeline would bring in an additional 700,000 barrels a day. While the impact on oil prices might be minimal -- the U.S. consumes nearly 20 million barrels a day -- it would be something to at least point to in an election year.

"For the Obama administration, having an answer to high prices will be much more important in 2012 than it is today," said Kevin Book. managing director at the research firm ClearView Energy Partners. "We think it will get approved."

The Solyndra factor: The recent bankruptcy of solar panel maker Solyndra may also play a part in Obama's decision.

The administration has taken considerable heat lately for giving the company, a maker of advanced and unproven solar panels, a half-billion dollar loan guarantee -- which taxpayers will now likely have to pay.

It's hard to see how the Democrats would want to go into a campaign with a record of supporting one technology that ultimately failed, while halting another that's proven and could immediately create revenue and jobs.

They gambled and lost on "this type of newfangled solar energy," said Michael Franc, vice president of government affairs at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "To then put the kibosh on 700,000 barrels of oil a day, in this climate -- that's a hard argument to carry." To top of page
First Published: October 7, 2011: 3:16 PM ET

[MOOP_Nazi]

Of related interest...

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.c ... -pipeline/

[goathead]

Earth First
We will mine the rest of the planets later.

[can't sit still]

if you look at slides 42 and 49, and read the text, the Keystone project is also about connecting to the Bakken field;
https://www.dmr.nd.gov/pipeline/assets/ ... 0-2011.pdf
It won't be just Alberta that gets torn up.

[BBadger]

What the hell is this forum, a liberal media feed? I have a great idea: why don't you post your own, original stuff rather than regurgitating messages and articles from other sources? Quite frankly, this is looking more and more like spam.

[MOOP_Nazi]

Good point.

BUt I do like SPAM... It is kinda of like bacon.. but different..

[cowboyangel]

BBadger maybe you need to migrate to the Bill O'Reilly forum, a better place for you! No?

[BBadger]

BBadger maybe you need to migrate to the Bill O'Reilly forum, a better place for you! No?

Don't jump to the ridiculous conclusion that anyone who is complaining about your copy-and-pasted article is doing so out of some sort of political affiliation or belief. I could not care less what political affiliation you support. Rather, I just get sick of seeing forum posts--on any forum--that are nothing more than regurgitated shit from other sources without containing anything original. That kind of practice I consider to be spam, and that is not a complimentary designation referring to the tasty canned meat from Hormel Foods.

So how about next time, when you feel compelled to "spread the word" about some sort of issue you read somewhere, you instead compose a message about it rather than bombard this forum with a verbatim copy of the article?

[MOOP_Nazi]

BBadger needs a hug..

Everyone hug BBadger!

(((BBadger)))

[MyDearFriend]

Earth First
We will mine the rest of the planets later.

(((Goathead))) you are the best

[can't sit still]

This is an excellent article on silver production. It talks a lot about oil production. According to the graphs and info; tar sands take 1 bbl of oil to produce 2.4 bbl of oil.
it seems to be a loser on EROI.
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/ ... isited.pdf

[Ugly Dougly]

What the hell is this forum, a liberal media feed? I have a great idea: why don't you post your own, original stuff rather than regurgitating messages and articles from other sources? Quite frankly, this is looking more and more like spam.

Could be a forum for discussion of pertinent news issues. Got a problem with that?

[BBadger]

We don't need a new forum. I have no problem with news issues being discussed; after all, there are no real "topics" in this particular forum. Tar sands, politics, whatever. The problem here is that these are not forum topics about issues. The problem is that these are forum topics about articles.

Imagine someone going to a Bible site and copying and pasting tracts from the Bible and pasting it here with some worthless lead-in: "OH WOW GUYS! This hits home doesn't it? Love thy neighbor! We should do this more in society!" I think people would start wondering if this was becoming some sort of venue for proselytizing--an excuse to copy-and-paste media you want people to read. I find such a practice no different than this copy-and-pasting that cowboyangel is creating new topics for.

Also, some may think that my issue is with "liberal media." No. That was just a reference to the source that cowboyangel's articles seem to all come from. Unfortunately, he/she thinks that just because this is BM that such media is somehow more acceptable here. It could be some article about Burning Man, and I still think it shouldn't be copy-and-pasted spammed on this site. Such copied articles are, by definition, not original. They're also not engaging in a dialog the way a topic would. Rather, this is treating the forum like a newsfeed with a comments section.

What would improve or change the situation? Making the posts about issues, not about articles.