We've got some oil to sell you . . .

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OK, I don't know how much coverage the Keystone pipeline got in the USA, but it sure got a lot up here. I'll give a brief overview of the issue from a very biased perspective, please pardon the bitter sarcasm here.

The Canadian Province of Alberta has a heckuva lot of oil in the northern part of the province. It is in oil sands, which used to be called tar sands. Extracting this oil is a messy business, and we are striving to improve the ecological impact of our industry. The Keystone pipeline was a proposal to build a pipeline from Northern Alberta to refineries in the US, yet a bucnh of jet setting actors and imbecilic hippies kicked up a huge stink and convinced Obama to kaibosh the deal. Looks like the hippies and actors would rather buy their oil from totalitarian regimes like Saudi Arabia than from the country with which they share the world's longest undefended border. And don't tell me that they are afraid of the pipeline spilling. That's retarded. There are many pipelines in use around the world, and the technoloogy is sound. Sounds to me like an effort to get the Canadians to drop their prices even further. In other words, an effort to hose Canada over.

And we don't need any external help in that regard, we've got plenty of internal voices striving to screw us up. A possible pipeline to the West Coast was proposed, so as to ship our valuable commodity to the Chinese, who expressed a willingness to buy it. I mean, oil is a vital part of the world economy, why shouldn't we sell the stuff, right? Our own homegrown hippies, and the Natives, are acting to kill that pipeline, citing environmental concerns. Again, pipeline tech is not that vulnerable, and I do not believe the Natives are truly worried about their ancestral lands. They merely want to extort more money from the companies. That extorted money, bear in mind, rarely goes to improving the lot of the average Native -- it ends up lining the pockets of the tribal elders, who then turn around and accuse the rest of Canada of not caring about the plight of their people, all the while not using the money they already got for the welfare of the people they supposedly govern "democratically".

In addition to this, what the hell is wrong with the Canadian government? Why not invest in oil refineries and upgraders right here in the country? It'd provide jobs, and it's easier to transport the finished product to various markets rather than the crude. That would take capital outlay, of course, but I'd rather my tax dollars go to that than to financing schools in Afghanistan that just get blown up a few months after construction, or to grants for some imbecile to hang a bunch of dead rabbits up in a grove and call it "an important piece of art." What utter fricking crap.

Can anyone give me a different perspective?

 

Sorry for the contraction of your initial post, but what you said in those sentences is obviously true. Don't you know that money makes everything better?

This I can give perspective on. If it was just an issue of capital outlay, it would be a no brainer. The cost to build a typical refinery to process regular oil is between $350 million and $500 million. I have no idea if that holds true for the oil sands refinement, although chances are it would be more expensive, not less. Even at that cost per refinery there would still be an eventual solid return on investment. However, there is also the issue of time. To construct, systemize, and bring to operation a refinery takes about eight years. That's eight years of actual work. It doesn't include the time required for the legislation to be approved, and then there's the whole contract award process that would be given out to various private companies. The contract award phase alone can add a couple of years onto the process.

The thing is, Canada has this resource which it wants to export NOW. While the refinery is a great long term plan, you'll lucky if you can get it working in under a decade. Exporting the unrefined stuff now can go a long way to paying for a refinery in the future.

 

Yeah, I hear you. My problem is, why the big rush to export it now? Why not take this opportunity to build up our own infrastructure? Think of the jobs!

And I can just see the argument: we have the pipeline in place, it cost a lot, it would render it useless to build a refinery now. We'll just keep selling it out so foreign locations can process it and sell it back to us.

Lee Iacocca said in his autobiography:

Is that what Canadians want to be? A colony to the superpowers of the world? That's <snipping> disgraceful. Blasted corporations undermining our democracy! One person, one vote my hairy oversized ass! We should not content ourselves to be hewers of wood and drawers of water for other nations.

BTA, you are right about the people who don't want to use the tar sands at all. These people are what i call "morons", as they flit around from here to there in their gas powered cars and airplanes, and they cheerfully turn on their computers and mixmasters powered by COAL powered generating plants, which are horrible polluters. Either they are hypocrites or ignorant, and in either case, their opinions should be carefully listend to and then delicately folded and placed in the trash can.

 

This is not entirely accurate. Politics were certainly a consideration, but not in the way you suggest. The reason the construction of Keystone XL was delayed by the Obama Administration was because such "enviro-nuts" as the Republican governor of Nebraska and a whole lot of ranchers who depend on the Oglalla aquifer have legitimate concerns about running a pipeline full of the world's dirtiest fossil fuels through their land, directly through the center of said aquifer - one of the largest in the US.

The administration wanted time to properly review the plans so that alternate routes could be drawn up and considered. Congressional Republicans were the ones who forced the vote, thereby seizing an opportunity to damage the President by either forcing him to piss of environmentalists by approving it, or by pissing off the unions and preventing "job creation," albeit temporary jobs, by denying it. He did tell the Keystone XL folks to reapply for the permit immediately after doing so, however.

EDIT:

It seems I did not read your response very carefully, BTA - my apologies. I argued essentially what you did. I guess I saw "enviro-nuts" and it got all blurry after that. Blame cup of coffee #3.

 

I edited my post, evidently while you were typing. Apologies again - I was being a douche.

 

Sorry, can't resist, I must confuse Hungary into this too

Please invite the Hungarian oil and gas company, MOL Group, we'll gladly take a look at there as well. We're already operating in Kazakhstan, Croatia, Cameroon, Iraq, Russia, Pakistan and in other countries, so Canada would be a nice addition! One of my friends used to be its deputy CEO in the 1990's, so it will be prosperous for both of us if you can convince your government to contact MOL, LKD

 

Of course you couldn't resist.

 

Welcome here, my fan Ragusa! Hugs! And thanks to German industry for investing billions of euros in Hungary, preferring it to Slovakia and other countries. Germans and Hungarians have been friends since 973 AD (Quedlinburg) anyway, let alone the marriage of our King Stephen and your Giselle of Bavaria in 995 AD.

 

If we are willing to sell to China, I can't see why we wouldn't sell to Hungary!

 

Yeah, and Hungary is still a smaller dictature than China, so the LAW guarantees a discount to us, right, Ragusa?

We wanna exploit it, man, EXPLOIT IT! The upstream portfolio, you know.