Thread: Keystone XL pipeline bill clears Senate hurdle despite veto threat

Originally Posted by MW

Excerpt from Judy post:



Let me make one thing very clear, Obama's opposition to the pipeline has absolutely nothing to do with my position on the issue. Just thought I'd better clear that up.

Ha! Well, that would be true for any of our positions, after all, we're citizens and voters, someone he's not represented well at all during his Presidency. With that cleared up, you see my point, right? That opposition to the last section that actually allows American oil into the pipeline for travel to refineries and then off to market doesn't make a lot of sense at this point. The Keystone is essentially finished for Canadian oil, this last leg is for our oil, which I'm sure is the only reason the State Department hasn't signed off on it and why Obama threatens a veto.

Originally Posted by imblest

Looking at the maps, it appears you are correct. There would be no reason to build that section except to pick up American oil.



http://keystone-xl.com/keystone-xl-p...all-route-map/


This is a good interactive map--

http://environment.nationalgeographi...ine-route-map/

However, all of this good still doesn't negate what this is doing to private property owners who don't want to sell. This is one of our basic rights as Americans, and though I don't own property, I'm not inclined to give it up.

Thank you, Imblest. And I agree with everyone who owns property and is targeted for issues of eminent domain when they don't want to sell. We just had property laid to waste for a storm water drainage area, using our land as a buffer preventing normal use and future development by a simple City Ordinance backed by a state statute empowering cities to do this, and get this, there is no compensation at all. They don't take title to it, they just leave it in our hands, rendering it useless, and still charge us property taxes on it, so please understand that I totally understand people who object to eminent domain, whether it's for a highway or a railroad or a utility company or in this instance a pipeline. But I also understand that we're not the first to be abused, we won't be the last, and at least the US House of Representatives is putting a stop to private gain developers using the right of eminent domain through "economic development" or any other scam to cheat people out of their property to benefit another private person. I also don't agree that Keystone should have been exempted from the bill, but that is still a bill, not law yet, so Keystone is where the US Supreme Court put them, with the ability in certain instances to use it, apparently. They are the only one, perhaps included because of the significance of this section of the pipeline and under eminent domain the property owners will at leastl be fairly compensated, probably very well compensated. We have some property owners in the Raleigh area that I just heard about this weekend whose land was laid idle as ours was for a future highway. They haven't been compensated, they can't sell or develop their land, it just sits waiting for whenever the NC DOT decides to expand the road. Many of their properties are worth millions of dollars but they're stuck and can't do anything with their property, it's called a "Protective Zone". Some day the state will build the road and then they'll be paid for their land but until then, nothing, and the situation has gone on for so long, many of the owners have died, many had planned to sell off or develop their land and use the revenue for retirement. They have now died without the benefit of their own property.

Government's right to lay idle should be the same as the right to take, because the damage to the property owners is the same. For example with our land, they call it a Flood Protection Zone, so they can use our land to soak up the run-off from new developments and clearings in other sections of the city and push more water through the system. How is that fair to use our land as flood control run off space so developers in other sections don't have to build ponds and pay for their own storm water drainage systems? It isn't fair. Sometimes, things just aren't fair.

And, at least, our Republicans in the US House of Representatives, Keystone aside, recognize that at least this right of eminent domain should not be used by private developers, something the stupid US Supreme Court incredibly failed to recognize.

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Fox News Poll: Voters want Obama to sign bill approving Keystone pipeline

By Dana Blanton
Published January 14, 2015 FoxNews.com

(AP)

Most Americans of all political stripes support construction of the long-delayed Keystone XL oil pipeline, and want President Obama to sign legislation approving it, according to a new Fox News poll.
The pipeline would transport oil from Canada to refineries in the United States.

A 65-percent majority says Obama should sign the Keystone legislation, according to the poll. That includes 82 percent of Republicans, 60 percent of independents and 52 percent of Democrats.

Click here to view full results of the poll (pdf)

Overall, only 22 percent of voters think the president should veto it -- which he has threatened to do.

The U.S. House passed a bill approving the pipeline Friday. The Senate is now considering Keystone legislation, but there won’t be a final vote this week.

Support for Keystone has held steady for years: 68 percent of voters backed it at the end of 2014, 70 percent in 2013 and 67 percent in 2012.

Here again, support comes from more than half of Democrats, most independents and almost all Republicans.

The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 1,018 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from January 11-13, 2015.

The full poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015...tone-pipeline/

Like everything else voters actually want him to do, I'm sure he'll veto the bill to show his foreign donors he's a good little boy, forsaking everything else that American Voters actually want and need, whether it's American oil or American borders.

Originally Posted by imblest

I had been in favor of the pipeline, but then I started seeing lots of info on the eminent domain issue. I also started reading that the pipeline would not help American independence from foreign oil, that it would carry only Canadian oil to be refined and shipped, which is making me look twice at the issue. I've also seen that it would not create as many jobs as I had first heard. I'm no longer sure where I stand, but I do not like the idea that property is being taken from those who don't want to sell, especially for a foreign corporation where a special exception has been made.

I know many here do not like Justin Amash, but I have to agree with him here--

Imblest, the articles that oppose the 4th phase of the Keystone Pipeline are written by either very uninformed people or anti-American oil lobbyists/proponents because this last phase is solely to pick up American Oil. So they lie in their anti-Keystone articles, just like the income tax lobbyists/proponents lie in articles about the FairTax. Same as they have done for years about illegal immigration. I learned this almost 10 years ago when what I read in articles didn't make any sense, and I set out on my own research effort, spent hours every day for about 3 weeks straight until I finally understood the plot against US using illegal immigration and even excess legal immigration to fill up our country with people who have no knowledge of our country, who could care less about it, were raised with different values and beliefs systems and of course, have no money or anything to bring to the table but instead suck us dry as a bone. It was my conclusion that it's an evil plot to eventually dissolve our country as a nation-state and meld US into the rest the world under a North American Union, a section of One World Government, which a growing immigrant population would support, whereas Americans never would.

Next project.

http://www.alipac.us/f19/%2418-billi...-farms-316819/

Originally Posted by MW

5. Building the sustainable economy, not the Keystone pipeline, will create far more jobs: Our nation is in desperate need of jobs. Approving the Keystone pipeline locks our nation into a trajectory of guaranteed job loss and threatens the stability of the US economy

Thinking long term is making a lot of sense.
******************************************
Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade

Originally Posted by vistalad

Thinking long term is making a lot of sense.
******************************************
Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade

The Keystone Pipeline is already built. The only section not built yet is the Phase 4 section that connects our oil fields in the upper midwest to the existing Keystone Pipeline, so it can be used by our American oil producers to get our own products to the refineries and off to market.

Originally Posted by Judy

The Keystone Pipeline is already built. The only section not built yet is the Phase 4 section that connects our oil fields in the upper midwest to the existing Keystone Pipeline, so it can be used by our American oil producers to get our own products to the refineries and off to market.

According to the following NY Times article, the Keystone Pipeline is not built

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/us...tail.html?_r=0

The Keystoneoil pipeline system is designed to carry up to 830,000 barrels of petroleum per day from the oil sands of boreal forests in western Canada to oil refineries and ports on the Gulf Coast. About half of the system is already built, including a pipeline that runs east from Alberta and south through North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska. The State Department is now reviewing a proposed 1,179-mile addition to the pipeline, the Keystone XL, a shortcut that would start in Hardisty, Alberta, and diagonally bisect Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. From Steele City, Neb., the addition would connect to existing pipelines to the Gulf Coast.

In reference to our discussion, what everyone is considering the Keystone Pipeline, it is only half built and would require another 1,179 miles to complete. Personally, I'd call that far from being complete. Just saying .......

Originally Posted by vistalad

Thinking long term is making a lot of sense.
******************************************
Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade

You're right, besides that, the whole argument may become a moot point if the following Deaily Beast article is to be believed:

DEAD IN THE WATER

11.19.14
Why the Keystone XL Pipeline May Not Be Built

Forget about the fight in Washington—the pipeline might not make economic sense anymore.
When viewed as a political grudge match, the ongoing battle over the Keystone XL pipeline remains one of the hottest fights in Washington. Proof of that can be seen by looking at yesterday’s vote in the Senate on the project, which failed to get the 60 votes needed for filibuster-proof passage.

But when considered solely on its economic merits, Keystone XL may end up being the pipeline equivalent of a jilted bride left waiting at the altar.

To be certain, that’s not what environmental activists want to hear. They have made Keystone XL the poster child of their climate-change efforts. Meanwhile, Republicans are seething over the years-long delays on the project and are eager to score political points against President Obama and the Democrats by forcing them to approve the federal permits needed for the pipeline. And Republicans are already promising another vote on the project in January when they will have a majority in the Senate.

Congressional Republicans can stage as many high-profile votes on Keystone XL as they like, but they can’t force Calgary-based TransCanada to build it. And if you look at the challenges now facing the pipeline, the biggest hurdles aren’t political, they’re economic.

Indeed, the pipeline’s soaring costs, coupled with rapidly falling global oil prices, and soaring domestic oil supplies, may well prove more dangerous to Keystone XL than a Megabus-load of Bill McKibbens. Add in a big slug of new rail-terminal capacity that is available to move crude out of Alberta to refiners, and it becomes clear that for all of the furor over Keystone XL, the transport capacity that the pipeline might provide matters less now than it did during the Bush administration, when the project was first proposed.

Earlier this month, TransCanada said that the cost of the 1,179-mile pipeline has dramatically increased since 2008. The company now estimates it will cost $8 billion, nearly 50 percent more than the $5.4 billion projected six years ago. Those higher construction costs will mean higher costs for companies who want to use the pipeline to ship their crude to market.
Higher shipping costs mean additional friction for companies working in the Canadian oil sands. Since July, the benchmark price for domestic crude oil, known as West Texas Intermediate, has fallen from over $100 per barrel to less than $75. The companies operating in the Canadian oil sands have always had to sell their product at a discount to the price of West Texas Intermediate because their crude is heavier and more difficult to refine.

Sandy Fielden, director of energy analytics at Texas-based RBN Energy, told me that if prices continue falling, then the companies producing crude from the oil sands “don’t have a profitable enterprise. And that’s true if we are talking about transporting the oil to market by rail or by pipe.”

Nor is it clear when prices might hit bottom. Thanks to the shale revolution, domestic oil production is soaring. Since 2004, US oil output has jumped by about 56 percent, the equivalent of pumping an extra 3.1 million barrels a day. To put that in perspective: that’s equal to Kuwait’s oil production!

Congressional Republicans can stage as many high-profile votes on Keystone XL as they like, but they can’t force Calgary-based TransCanada to build it.

All that new oil has to go somewhere. But US refineries are already running at capacity. As Fielden says, “We have plenty of crude.” And in particular, the refineries on the US Gulf Coast, which are capable of converting the heavy crude coming out of Alberta into gasoline, jet fuel, and other refined products, are already at capacity.

Despite the fall in prices, domestic oil production is likely to continue growing. In July, Ed Morse, the head of commodities research at Citigroup Global Markets, declared that the US is now producing more oil than both Russia and Saudi Arabia. The US is producing so much oil, said Morse, that the US now must begin exporting large quantities of crude, and those crude exports will come on top of the 3.5 million barrels per day of refined products that are already being exported from US refineries to customers overseas.

Now to the last issue: oil by rail. By the end of this year, western Canada will have about 1.1 million barrels per day of rail-terminal capacity which can be used to ship crude to refineries across the US and Canada. Keystone XL has a design capacity of 830,000 barrels per day. Yes, it costs more to move oil by rail than it does by pipeline. And yes, there has been a regulatory crackdown on that mode of transport after a series of dramatic accidents, including the disastrous derailment and fire in the small Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic, which left 47 people dead.

Tougher regulations on tank cars and oil-by-rail make sense. But they are also unlikely to significantly slow the trend. Oil producers in Canada (as well as those in North Dakota) have grown accustomed to shipping their product by rail as it gives them more marketing options that those that are available with a single pipeline like Keystone XL.

Let me conclude with an observation I got this morning from J. Mark Robinson, an energy consultant who spent 31 years working on infrastructure-siting issues for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Robinson, who favors the construction of Keystone XL, said the project is “not any better or worse than any other pipeline out there. The difference is that the environmentalists have successfully attached a symbolism to the project that is far greater than what it actually merits.”
In other words, symbolism can work for a while. And the politics can get nasty. But in the end, Keystone XL’s future depends on whether or not the pipeline will be profitable. And right now, that profitability is not certain.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...-be-built.html

Originally Posted by MW

According to the following NY Times article, the Keystone Pipeline is not built

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/us...tail.html?_r=0

In reference to our discussion, what everyone is considering the Keystone Pipeline, it is only half built and would require another 1,179 miles to complete. Personally, I'd call that far from being complete. Just saying .......

Okay, then feel free to call it what you want. The facts are that the Keystone Pipeline is finished, complete, done deal, and has been pumping Canadian crude for 5 years since 2010 into the US and down to the Gulf.

Three phases of the project are in operation, and the fourth is awaiting U.S. government approval. They are:

• The Keystone Pipeline (Phase I), delivering oil from Hardisty, Alberta 3,456-kilometre (2,147 mi) to the junction at Steele City, Nebraska and on to Wood River Refinery in Roxana, Illinois and Patoka Oil Terminal Hub (tank farm) north of Patoka, Illinois, completed in June 2010.^[2]
• The Keystone-Cushing extension (Phase II), running 480-kilometre (300 mi) from Steele City to storage and distribution facilities (tank farm) at Cushing, Oklahoma,^[8] completed in February 2011.^[3]
• The Gulf Coast Extension (Phase III), running 784-kilometre (487 mi) from Cushing to refineries at Port Arthur, Texas was completed in January 2014,^[4][5] and a lateral pipeline to refineries at Houston, Texas and a terminal will be completed in mid-2015.^[6]
• The proposed Keystone XL Pipeline (Phase IV), which would essentially duplicate the Phase I pipeline between Hardisty, Alberta, and Steele City, Nebraska,^[9] with a shorter route and a larger-diameter pipe. It would run through Baker, Montana, where American-produced light crude oil from the Williston Basin (Bakken formation) of Montana and North Dakota would be added^[7] to the Keystone's current throughput of synthetic crude oil (syncrude) and diluted bitumen (dilbit) from the oil sands of Canada.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Pipeline

The only portion not finished is the Keystone Pipeline XL, which is the portion that swings around through the upper midwest to pick up American crude, this is Phase 4 of the Keystone Pipeline with Phases 1, 2 and 3 finished and in operation. The swing over to the Texas crude goes on-line this year. The Canadian Oil has been pumping through this pipeline since 2010, so the time to object to it was about 8 to 10 years ago, not now. All you're objecting to now is the pipeline segment that picks up American crude in the upper midwest which makes as much sense as allowing Canada to construct a new interstate through our country while preventing Americans form using it.

There's a point in time where as Americans we should not wish to look as stupid as we're appearing on this and by this I mean trying to stop construction of a pipeline that's already in the ground and has been pumping Canadian crude through our country for almost 5 years with the only section left to be built is the section that picks up our crude and benefits our producers.