but a lot less will get spilled into the Oglalla aquifer.

I don't know why we would risk our country's environment to benefit Canada and the Koch brothers.

I live in the Midwest.

If the Keystone pipeline is approved our gas prices are estimated to go up 20 to 40 cents per gallon.

and less will be extracted or moved.

I care about the volume of an "accident" being the difference between bad and a travesty.

I care about the path creating unacceptable risk to the water supply.

I don't have the numbers to answer your question but again because the cost of transport will be down and labor reduced, it is likely to be a significant increase. If it wasn't more and significantly cheaper there would be no interest in the pipeline from the people wanting to build it would it?

The more you drive up the cost, the more likely it stays in the ground.

As it stands tar sand production has maxed out the Keystone (already built, eastern) line.

http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/09/25/u-s-oil-imports-canada-hit-all-time-high-despite-opposition

http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/02/05/keystone-xl-northern-leg-fracked-oil-pipeline-tar-sands

They're moving to rail which is why Warren Buffet bought up BNSF, but he still supports Keystone: http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2014/03/03/warren-buffett-is-still-bullish-on-rail-and-keystone/

So, to answer your question, between 100-200k bpd would be possible, if they stopped rail transport (which has kill around 50 people due to "rail bombs" so far), if not it'd be 730k bpd on top of what's already going.

XL to current rail doesn't capture all current transport, dis it?

Something like 2.5 million bpd goes through Keystone (not XL).

The green line here:



Keystone XL is actually more beneficial to the Bakken since it allows production ramp up.

Either way it's going by rail if it's not going by Keystone XL. If you build Keystone XL then you can increase it even more, or ban rail, since rail has killed people and it's far more dangerous than pipelines.

via Keystone XL is lower than alternatives --- and with the existing price, they may stop extracting the oil as it is too expensive. (Even with Keystone XL the price is becoming too low.)

From the beginning this is why the original State Department assumption that the oil will be used one way or the other -- so any estimates of its carbon should not be in the analysis were wrong. If the transport cost is less, it HAS to raise the threshold for when extracting the harder to get oil.

https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/it-just-doesnt-add-up-why-i-think-not-building-keystone-xl-will-likely-leave-a-billion-barrels-worth-of-bitumen-in-the-ground/

Another few points, some of which are made in the article.
First, it's gonna depend a lot on the price of oil. Shipping by train, which at least in the short term is the other alternative, costs something like 5 or 10 dollars a barrel more. So it shifts the break-even point for tar sand oil by that much. If oil stays at 60, then we're probably already below the break-even point for a lot of the dirty oil projects anyway, but if it goes back to like 70 or 80, then the extra transportation cost could make a big difference. Aside: how crazy is it that oil was at 100 or even 110 just a few months ago and now we're below 60?

Also, even if in the long run all the oil would get pumped out either way, stopping Keystone will certainly delay this, which buys more time for either renewable energy to become economical, or for humanity to wake up to the climate threat and pass some real carbon treaty.

Finally, there's the philosophical point, which is that if all the oil in the tar sands gets burned, then the planet is finished, so building Keystone, whose purpose is to ensure that tar sands oil gets burned as quickly as possible, is akin to facilitating mass suicide.

Can we pipe it over YOUR drinking and living water supply, knowing full well that there it is almost guaranteed to fail and leak into it? My adult children and grandkids LIVE on top of the Ogallala Aquifer and DEPEND on it for their very existence.

NO FUCKING PIPELINE, NO FUCKING WAY.

Now, will they actually USE such engineering -- probably not.

They will use cheap ass, poor tolerance, Chinese-steel. They will not put computers with automated shut offs when a pressure differential is detected, thus any spill would be small and not cause a lot of harm.

I am all for infrastructure if they build it like they used to build things forty years ago. Sadly, they don't.

We've that kind of blatant lie too damned many times to even begin to take it seriously.

See Exxonn Valdez. See Deep Sera Horizon.


Save it for the Teabagger chumps.

Do you really think we do not posses technology to do this safely? We don't use it because our corporations suck and buy everything as cheaply as possible, but it does not have to be that way.

As for Valdez, I am from Alaska. The captain was drunk off of his ass. He never even slowed down. It is a wonder the ship did not split it two.

The Deep Water Horizon was most definitely caused by cheap materials with poor tolerances. The cement job was not up to protocols. Inspections were not done properly.

See Chernobyl

Funny. How many cups of coffee did you have this morning?

As I've learned here XL makes no real difference in transportation of tar sands oil. I guess TransCanada is run by some pretty stupid people who are blowing 8B on a useless add on to existing facilities.

The issue of the saud gangsters driving oil prices down in order to disrupt and/or destroy high cost extraction is a completely different topic from the OP. You owe the OP an apology for such a blatant hijack ... oh wait...

The Saud gangsters are doing there best to keep those of us in the Western Hemisphere out of the party, even if that means selling at a loss for the next decade. (And even if it means killing the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela -- actually the Saudis would love that anyways.)

Add another $10 for rail transport costs, then it's profitable around $40.

Choose your poison: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2014/04/26/pick-your-poison-for-crude-pipeline-rail-truck-or-boat/

With international LSC at $58, we are entering a regime we simply haven't been in before.

Tar sands are probably OK until it hits $40. Bakken is in trouble below $50 (some say some Bakken is OK at $42).

The Saudi's want to make sure we feel it. Interesting times ahead indeed.

Keystone XL only shaves a few bucks off of rail transport, too, so it's like $8 per barrel. Anything below $38 a barrel is going to seriously harm Bakken and Canadian tar sands.

The thing that puzzles me is that production can be ramped right back up as soon as the price goes up happens. It's not going to hurt anyone in the long term. And a lot of Bakken producers already have sunk costs on thousands of rigs. They'll pump anyway since they can't set the price. They are OK for a few years yet.

I don't understand the Saudi's strategy.

My cocktail napkin ramblings tell me it takes at least $12 to get a barrel of crude through an entirely completed pipeline. Do you think it's less?

The cost of tar sands is around $20-30 less per barrel because it is nasty and only the gulf is prepared to refine it:



Looks like I was off on the cost of rail by $15. I thought it was much lower than $25. So tar sands gets in trouble at $55, and we're almost there.

If they're right about that, I have to think about this more.

I wasn't prepared for it, since I had recently seen that desmodo blog about Keystone / XL Bakken, and decided to link it, since you were just asking about raw transport ability over Keystone XL. I've even seen tar sand costs as low as $9 a barrel. It seems as if they're all over the place. Whatever they're doing up in Alberta it's crazy (just look at any pictures, satellite photos in particular). It's some sort of insane environmental disaster.

If you really want to go deep calculate in the environmental costs of cleanup and CO2 release, as well, heh. I suspect in the end it's not even profitable, just a shell game.

That's not an idle question. Energy extraction has always been "American"...

Whether or not rail continues. TransCanada gets transport costs. If rail continues, then TransCanada gets to profit off of Bakken one way or another.

Either way it's 730k bpd of transport fees they can get extra.

My comments about rail is just me trying to be sensible, if you open up Keystone XL is makes sense to block the rail transport, because it's killed almost 50 people and there have been three major accidents since 2010.

I don't think that would happen though.

So from the tar sand point of view, 730k bpd can be pumped extra, but if they stop rail, only 100k extra can be produced. Either way TransCanada gets the total 730k bpd transport fees.

Society has only so much money to invest. Putting billions into oil infrastructure wrong way to go.

Plus, every impediment to tar sands needs to be put in its way to shut down a horrible extraction technique.

Pipeline is also a harm to local environment and a risk to aquifer.

There just is no good reason for this pipeline.

And if tar oil breaks even at 40, what kind of windfall profits are they making at 100+? And who gets these windfall profits?

Profits from the Export of foreign Canadian owned chemically thinned tar oil transported through America......the stuff goes through one foreign land through American domestic land and then to more foreign lands...interesting part always left out.

I'm open to opposing the pipeline extension, I just need a solid plan.

reminder to our children of how close we came to bombing the planet into oblivion with carbon.

production may slow down because the price of oil has gotten lower than the cost of producing the tar sands. Let's be honest with our selves, we are not in any position to give up our need and desire for oil and its products, it would be more beneficial to protest the slowness of developing solar, wind and water power production. This is renewable sources which will benefit generations to come, and a clean alternative. Raising hell at the oil companies to produce a product which we demand is not going to go anywhere.