Is It Time to Revisit the Keystone XL Pipeline?
oilprice.com
oilprice.com
But lets not get carried away, these might just be short term effects and once the Saudi's and whomever else picks up the slack, prices might drop just as rapidly as they've risen. Also, the Russians might re-appear on the market if they manage to come to some diplomatic resolution. Either way, the current shortage might only be temporary and could easily turn into a surplus.
And of course a long term effect of the current high prices is an acceleration of the move to renewable energy. If you are still burning oil or gas, you are at the mercy of market prices. And that looks to be like an expensive thing right now. The long term effect of people needing less oil and gas is fierce competition among oil and gas producers for a shrinking market. So, adding more production is not really necessary if demand starts dropping instead of increasing (which it has historically done). That might be sooner rather than later.
EV production is currently millions of vehicles per year and will soon hit tens of millions of vehicles per year and eventually ICE vehicle production is going to be less than half of the market a few years later. That's a lot of petrol and diesel that won't be needed any more.
industrial uses of oil and gas, not just as an energy source, but as feedstock, is not easily abated with renewables.
I think that residential and may be some commercial heating with gas could be replaced in the short and medium term with electricity, which then makes renewables possible for these use cases. But a factory making steel beams or something would require gas heating because it is built into their production process, and changing that over would basically mean re-designing and re-engineering the factory! I dont think that can be done in the short to medium term at all, even if they start planning today.
There's still a good half-century of life left in oil and gas imho, and that's not including the emerging economies' needs in the future as they develop.
High prices also incentivize re-use and re-cycling. If it's cheaper to buy brand new steel beams and drop the ones from the old building into a landfill, that's what people will do, but if that costs twice as much, the new building will have old (or at least recycled) beams, same way England is full of houses that are say 150 years old but have 200 year old timber because timber was expensive then and so they re-used it.
Ultimately, even if our society insists on ignoring the crisis, Mother Nature isn't fooled, our borders will be overwhelmed by people fleeing the destruction of their homes, in many places summer temperatures will be unbearably hot, and all this acts as a permanent reminder that we fucked up, which can't help but spur (even if belated) policy change.
Would it?
Oil is a commodity with a huge market. Isn't that oil going to fetch the same price no matter how it actually gets to the market? Lowering production costs for any given small producer should simply mean more profit for them rather than lower prices for buyers of the commodity.
Keystone XL goes south to Steele City. Helping also move Baker, MT oil. Not really a total Canadian thing.
Keystone XL has nothing at all to do with Europe.
With XL being cancelled. Canadian oil can still get to Port Arthur for export; but would not have the capacity to still serve the US market.
In terms of Canadians helping Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_East
This is the pipeline that would have been helping Europe but that got cancelled. Huge failure on our government's part for doing this.
As a hail mary they approved: https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/n-l-bay-du-nord-oil-project-high...
Deep water well isn't going to be getting built tomorrow. Even if they magic the best resources every and rush this... I would expect it's minimum 5 years out? Europe can wait 5 years without oil right?
Really our only option will be oil trains but those crash and burn far too often and probably wont be allowed.
So basically... Canada's promise that we are going to be there to help Europe is a lie.
The dotted lines exist already. What got cancelled is in Green.
We already get our oil to the gulf. XL is about getting Montana hooked up.
> It was originally seen as being politically expedient to run the pipeline over U.S. land instead of Canadian land not to mention the refining and exporting capabilities already present in the U.S. Golf.
Energy east was cancelled as well. There is a pipeline almost all the way across canada.
There's also another line that briefly goes over Michigan, Line 5. They tried to shut this pipeline down rather illegally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enbridge_Line_5
Never did hear much more. Obviously they didnt shut it down. Toronto would basically be a ghost town if they did.
>The key piece often missed when talking about "energy independence" is oil is sold in a global commodities market. Global demand will affect domestic prices, even when the oil is pumped and refined domestically.
The more important factor. Russia has been planning this invasion since before 2014.
For environmental reasons we cancelled every possible way to deliver oil to Europe. We then made a promise to Europe to help them but... ugh... how? Oh right that's why our government really impressed upon them to look into renewables. We are MANY years away from ever helping Europe.
Sure is interesting that our government played right into Putin's hands.
Not exactly https://www.straight.com/finance/report-shows-70-percent-of-...
IPCC report: The evidence is clear: the time for action is now
> Limiting global warming will require major transitions in the energy sector. This will involve a substantial reduction in fossil fuel use, widespread electrification, improved energy efficiency, and use of alternative fuels (such as hydrogen). > "Having the right policies, infrastructure and technology in place to enable changes to our lifestyles and behaviour can result in a 40-70% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050."
The article concludes that solving supply shortage issues would be faster and more efficient by re-opening currently offline oil wells domestically and finishing existing projects (that aren't XL).
Nevermind, what the article doesn't mention, that a lot of the shortage is due to the OPEC+ deal that happened to stop the prices from plummeting and is already in the process of being unwound (on schedule... despite some wanting to unwind it quicker).
Is this oil currently being transported by truck or is it sitting in the ground waiting for a pipeline? Or something else?
Railroads can't go "anywhere", generally you need very shallow grades and the right structure underneath the tracks. Unfortunately the soil, rock layers, fault lines (think small fractures that water travels along, not san andres), drainage patterns, and many more factors contribute to environmental safety beneath said lines. So your rail would likely not be able to take the most efficient or straight path for rail. This isn't a problem for something like the XL pipeline, which had sealed clay basins planned in worrysome areas. Train wrecks are also catastrophic, so while catch basins work pretty dang well, they can damaged easily in events like that. So you end up having to make compromises somewhere: efficient trains vs environmental safety. Pipelines have similar issues, but they're not dealing with thundering transient loads, and modern pipelines are very safe compared to their 50 year old counterparts, in the same way US nuclear reactors are far safer than RMBK reactors. Tracks that can "haul anything" certain could be built, but at a larger cost than general freight rail.
The reference seems to be missing.
> US and Canada's lol industry
Is that supposed to be oil industry? If not, I not sure I understand.
What I'm trying to understand is if this pipeline is for additional capacity or if it is meant to replace the trucks and rail? I'm trying to understand a bit of the environmental impact. If the choice is pipeline vs no pipeline then it seems clear from an environmental perspective. But if the choice is pipeline vs truck/rail than there might be some factors in play that I'm not currently aware of.
There's already a pipeline going from Canada down to Steele City and then east to Illinois and also south to a few places like port arthur.
In terms of Canadian oil it's already going to USA markets. XL doesn't really majorly benefit Canada.
What XL would have done would connect up the Baker, MT oil to steele city.
XL being cancelled benefits Canada because Baker does have to use trucks or train.
[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/07/to-build-back-better-...
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s...
[2] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/8-predictions-for-the... - notice that the WEF removed the page related to this quote: '1. All products will have become services.' leads to 'Sorry, but we can’t find the page you were looking for' while other links still work
[3] https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/
Why is this? If an external supplier sees you building an alternative to get off their product, they will sabotage your efforts by artificially dropping their prices below cost, tanking your efforts. This happens repeatedly with OPEC and we keep falling for it.
I think this is an opportunity for blue + red to agree on the outcome, but for slightly different conclusions. Until we can work past cutting off your nose to protect personal identity politics, we are unlikely to see any measurable progress.
I agree. Hypothetically speaking, are there any betting markets that would allow a person to "short" this issue? I think we all know this will never happen.
US owned / domestic oil companies can still do this. I don't see what independence gets us here. Unless we go the communist route and nationalize oil production, which clearly will never happen in the US.