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TransCanada, the company trying to build the Keystone XL pipeline, has split off a domestic pipeline from the one that crosses a national border, moving to begin work on a pipeline from Cushing, Oklahoma to Port Arthur, Texas. The segment from Canada down to Cushing, however, will need a separate permit application and could take years to get approval. But the White House seems on board for the Cushing-to-Port Arthur segment, which does not require State Department approval:
The move by TransCanada would alleviate the glut of oil at Cushing, a major terminal, and address one of the main reasons for building the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. Plans for the segment of pipeline crossing the U.S.-Canada border would come “in the near future” the company said [...]
In a statement Monday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama welcomes TransCanada’s plans for the southern pipeline segment, and he pledged that the new application for the cross-border section would receive a thorough assessment.
“We support the company’s interest in proceeding with this project, which will help address the bottleneck of oil in Cushing that has resulted in large part from increased domestic oil production, currently at an eight-year high,” Carney said of the section from Oklahoma to the Gulf of Mexico. “Moving oil from the Midwest to the world-class, state-of-the-art refineries on the Gulf Coast will modernize our infrastructure, create jobs, and encourage American energy production.” Carney said the administration would “take every step possible to expedite the necessary federal permits” for the segment.
A small part of the cause of the run-up in gas prices has been refinery shutdowns. I don’t think facilitating this small amount of domestic oil supply to the refineries will make a huge difference, but there are job-creation elements to this. TransCanada claims that the project will create 4,000 jobs.
This will not allow for the transport of tar sands oil from Canada in any way, although it will help shale oil from North Dakota and elsewhere in the Midwest to get to market. In fact, it makes the Keystone project a little less vital, because the domestic infrastructure to get Midwest oil to the refineries will already be in place. And of course, TransCanada will have to admit to less job creation coming from the Keystone project.
I wouldn’t call this a setback for environmentalists necessarily, other than the fact that oil economy infrastructure generally delays a transition to a post-carbon economy that will preserve the planet.
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It seems to me that you’re going a bit light on the criticism of this. Any new oil infrastructure is a loss for the environment.
It’s game over for the world.
It would really assist the Obama team in gaining support from environmentalists for increased oil production if the Obama team had taken any serious step forward on changing energy infrastructure and economy or climate change. Instead, the Obama team has treated environmentalists as a stepchild.
The Obama team treats most of it’s constituency like the red-headed stepchild.
It’s certainly a ‘setback’ for ranchers in Texas who don’t want their land condemned via eminent domain by a foreign corporation.
http://theenergycollective.com/rockykistner/77103/protesters-keystone-xl-pipeline-dont-mess-texas
Mr Petronobyl is thrilled about this:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2012/02/27/obama_welcomes_transcanada_plan_for_new_pipeline/
Obama will, of course, approve Keystone XL in his second term, if not he would have killed the project outright already. This action will show that the “jobs” the pipeline would create are illusory, but facts are secondary to the projects supporters. It will do nothing for the price of gas, even with increased supply as energy prices are in the realm of speculators and the government will do everything possible to inflate the hydrocarbon bubble.
Of course Obama is unconcerned about his supporters, “Where else are they going to go” has been the motto of the Administration since it took office 3 years ago.
Wasn’t it didn’t it used to be I want it to be illegal to export America’s raw resources.
I want that law enforced and made permanent, how stupid can America be?
And also, I do not want to import any kind of waste period, and yes that does include that god damn tar sand debris.
It will raise the price of gas as this removes oil from the US and prices are more easily controlled
The estimate is for a minimum $0.25 increase in the mid-west, $0.10 to $0.15 elsewhere as we move to Brent as the price in the US – I expect a dollar increase everywhere.
Indeed that is why Obama did not kill it – getting a billion out of the oil companies is easy when they get a a hundred billion from you.
Why does no one mention it is not going to a world class refinery that is being built – it is going to an old – but world class – refinery that is partially owned by the Saudi Royals and from there it will be exported so as to drain the US market and create supply shortages that can be used to justify large price increases. This is public knowledge but our MSM refuses to discuss.
David Dayen is a highly gifted synthesizer of our daily news from a mildly progressive perspective. I wish that this otherwise excellent site had someone of his abilities interpreting the day’s news from the left.
This is insane. Last fall, there was a 5.6 earthquake in Oklahoma….largest quake ever recorded in the state. There were quakes before and after that one….the forequake was about 4.7 and the aftershock about the same. At the time, I noted that if you located Cushing on a map and drew a line starting at Cushing and going due south, when you get about 20 miles south of Cushing, the 5.6 and at least one of the 4.7 (maybe both) one of those quakes was 4 miles to the east and one was about 4 miles to the west of that point 20 miles south of Cushing on that line.
Those quakes (according to real scientists who don’t work for the oil and gas business or the state and federal agencies supporting that industry who are the foxes in charge of the henhouse)believe these large quakes were caused by the injection wells associated with fracking. There has been a ‘swarm’ of 2.5-3.0 quakes in central Oklahoma that can be attributed to fracking; the big quakes are caused by the injection well for disposing of the waste from fracking.
A local news station was doing a really good and heavily promoted multi-segment investigative report on fracking last week, and they were supposed to have the next segment on earthquakes, but last Wednesday it just ended…no more promos, no new segments. In fact, there was a noon news segment on Wednesday where the reporter was doing a live webchat and would answer a few of the questions people posted on the livechat during that hour. She answered one question on the air in the first five minutes and said she would be back and answer more, but after someone asked about the Cushing pipeline route and the big quakes, a lot of oil & gas supporters started posting saying that the wells suddenly polluted, the crops dying near fracking and the quakes were absolutely not caused by fracking, she didn’t come back on the air to answer any more questions. And that’s when the promos stopped, and there was no more mention of the segment about fracking and earthquakes that they had been promoting.
The next evening on the CBS national news, there was a story about an Oklahoma oilman talking about how Oklahoma’s oil drilling is booming and he said something like thanks to the new technology, we could be energy independent in something like 10 years. That new technology? Yep…they are not only fracking for gas here, they are now fracking for oil.
And now I read this….they’re building that pipeline from Cushing to Texas…right through the injection well quake zone.
Oh, and that excellent investigative reporter had already reported there were 11,000 fracking wells in Oklahoma.
As I said, insanity.
Hey c’mon, I have red hair.
Great, US pipeline segment needs no oversight/approval; Canada can build its segment to the border… just firehose that shit over the border and around all those pesky internat’l pipeline regulations.
the glut of oil will be moved from cushing one way or another; the other option is rail, which is more expensive…
I think it might depend on how you look at the expense. With the pipeline, the risks associated with spills (and earthquakes increase that likelihood) are transferred in large part to the people who will be affected, just as the damage from quakes caused by the injection wells from fracking and the loss of drinking water and loss of crops due to contamination.
Homes and some public buildings (one on a college campus as I recall) were damaged by the 5.6 quake. Since (until fracking) this wasn’t a quake-prone area, most people don’t have earthquake insurance, and if they do, the deductible is very high, so they will have out-of-pocket expenses even if they do have insurance coverage.
Oklahoma’s governor applied for FEMA assistance to cover damage from the quakes and was turned down. It seems to me that the state AG should pursue the company (or companies) with injection wells near the quake to determine who is responsible, and try to recoup damages for those affected. But he’s too busy not doing mortgage fraud investigations and filing a lawsuit because he opposes making religion-related employers provide birth control coverage in their employees health insurance policies.
With both fracking and pipelines, the profits are privatized and the risks and losses are either socialized or are transferred to the unfortunate people whose property and water source is affected.
I don’t know whether sending it by rail is more expensive or not, but the way things operate now, I don’t think all the costs are being factored in because some are borne by people other than those benefiting from the sale of the oil. To the seller of the oil, a pipeline through quake-prone land (land made quake-prone by the oil & gas industry) may be less expensive…..but the cost to other people is, in my opinion, too great. And they aren’t included in the decision-making process.