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Kath1
(4,309 posts)XL pipeline would be a horrible thing. We need to stop it.
branford
(4,462 posts)Canada intends to mine the oil, with or without Keystone. In fact, the oil is already coming to the USA to be refined and shipped. Most of the pipeline is already built, and the remainder is transported by rail and truck.
Kath1
(4,309 posts)We need to be moving away from fossil fuels. not getting more committed to them.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Move away from them, that is. Not in the near future anyway. Fossil fuels supply 87% of the world's primary energy, a proportion that has dropped by only 2% in the last 30 years. The world's entire industrial and transportation infrastructure is built around fossil fuels. There's too much inertia in the global system for any shift away from fossil fuels to be anything more than a hopium pipe dream.
Old Nick
(468 posts)Dammit!
think
(11,641 posts)Writer Adam Wernick
October 21, 2014 · 8:45 AM EDT
Uncertainly over the Keystone XL pipeline and a slump in oil prices are prompting several big companies to halt plans to extract oil from the Alberta tar sands.
The latest company to pull out of the tar sands is Norwegian oil giant Statoil. But just in the last year, Shell, the French energy company Total, and SunCor Energy of Canada have all cancelled tar sands projects.
~Snip~
That pipeline is crucial to tar sands projects becoming profitable, Palmer says. Without it, “a marginally profitable business [turns] into a completely unprofitable business — and that's scaring oil producers off of tar sands projects,” Palmer explains.
Because tar sands oil is a much lower-quality version of crude oil, it sells at $20 to $30 dollars less than conventional crude. With conventional crude oil now selling for about $80 a barrel, the price of tar sands oil has fallen to around $60 a barrel. It also costs about $25 per barrel to move tar sands crude by rail from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico, Palmer says. The Keystone Pipeline would cut that transportation price from $25 to $9 a barrel, which is why oil companies are so eager to see the pipeline move forward...
~Snip~
Read more:
http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-10-21/big-companies-are-pulling-plug-their-projects-albertas-tar-sands
