Proposed Oil Pipeline from Canada
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-10-18/proposed-oil-pipeline-canada
Pros and cons of a proposed pipeline to bring crude oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Understanding the stakes for the environment, the U.S. economy and the White House.
Guests
Juliet Eilperin
environmental reporter, The Washington Post, and author of " Demon Fish: Travels Through the Hidden World of Sharks."
James Hansen
climate scientist; director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Matthew Koch
vice president for Oil Sands and Arctic Issues at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy
P.J. Crowley
former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs; retired Air Force colonel; the General Omar N. Bradley Chair in Strategic Leadership at the Army War College, Dickinson College and the Penn State Dickinson School of Law; and a fellow at The George Washington University.
Comments
Please familiarize yourself with our Code of Conduct and Terms of Use before posting your comments.
d_Arcy,
Your bad, d_Arcy. Much too good of an analysis for this site! (Nice going).
Visit DRShow blog, see racist badboys kiss, as they kiss our environment goodbye.
What a circle of jerks! I can't believe Big Energy Execs have not read the Department of Defense/CIA report on the climate change and sea rise now in progress. (Listen to Ira Flatow sometime!) If you ship the soot to Louisiana and Texas refineries it will end up floating in the dead zone we call Gulf of Mexico after a series of "accidents." Best move: Halt tar sands mining until it can be cleaned up and move development money to sustainable non-emitting energy technology. Japan and Germany have gotten the message. But here we remain in the informational dark because "badboys" threaten to cut off or speculate in our "juice." If China and India burn the soot they'll melt the glaciers and end up starving, and so will most of us.
It is a self-obsessed supremacist dingbat that will cry about the price at the pump while advocating genocide. The Market did not create us, but our deviant elite created the Market. Flush the Market and save Civilization. Don't flush Civilization to save the Market. (I can't believe "Clean Coal" commercials are still allowed to be broadcast, but they are. That's the Market at work.)
Some facts not discussed, at least so far:
1) The Tar Sands companies have been prevented from building a pipeline west to the Pacific Ocean by Indian tribes who rightly fear the desecration of their land.
2) A pipeline east would entail crossing densely occupied land with expensive rights of way with refineries at the destination that are already at near capacity.
3) The Gulf of Mexico refineries have or can relatively easily expand capacity and export of the refined products is easy with routes to anywhere in the world. Without access to the refineries here, there is no economically viable path to get it to potential users. There is a good reason that no new refineries have been built in the U.S. for decades: it is far cheaper to modernize and expand a current refinery.
4) The extra oil will lower the cost of gasoline in the Midwest as the supply is currently limited to locally extracted oil. But as some of the refined oil (products) is exported through connecting pipes to the shipping ports that are expected to be built, that price will go back up (and more so as the world price goes up unless the world falls back into recession or even a depression though recovery will bring strong price increases).
5) The only reason that the Tar Sands oil extraction is being is being developed is the current price and the strong likelihood that the price will continue to rise rapidly with the confluence of world economic growth and the arrival of peak oil with its consequential decrease in the supply from current producers.
6) Job creation with pipeline building is much less than with wind turbine building and maintenance. But it is interesting that an oil pipeline can force an approval process for right-of-way when wind turbine operators and power companies have trouble getting rights-of-way to get the wind energy of the midwest to the consumers in Chicago and further east. States are reluctant to grant lanes crossing it unless at least some of the power is for local use. But that seems not to apply for pipelines, even when there is a high probability for devastating pollution from pipeline leaks.
7) One pipeline spill that I don't recall being mentioned was the devastating spill this year in tributaries to the Missouri River, I believe. The governor of Montana was quite exorcised about the practices and response of the pipeline operator.
8) The CEO (Jeffrey Immelt) of GE has said that Solar sources for electric power generation will be competitive with fossil fuel generation within a few years; actually, perhaps because of Chinese subsidies, PV and wind already are real close.
@andrew eggers:
It is interesting that the pipeline people seem to have had a lot less trouble in getting a "right-of-way for their pipeline but electrical transmission companies have near impossible (at least right now, although improvement may be in the offing) barriers to getting the energy collected from wind turbines in farmers' fields to the customers needing that power (to the east, mostly). This is particularly a problem when that power has to cross a state.
In other words, the system is currently strongly biased in favor of dirty fossil fuels.
The use of those fossil fuels will make Nebraska (and other midwest states) more like Texas and Oklahoma this summer. Everyone should take note of the agricultural output in Texas and Oklahoma relative to that of a few years ago to see what this will mean. And then take a look at the output of farmers in Minnesota and North Dakota along the Red River that has had three 100-year floods in the last ten years or so. Look at the impact of that on their lives.
Letting farmers make money from placing wind turbines in their fields, which the farmers of North Dakota seem to consider a win-win event is beneficial for EVERYONE.