[dobbles]

At the risk of coming off as disingenuous, I need to do the "just askin questions" bit....

Even though I now live in an area steeped in oil history, I did not grow up here and am pretty uneducated on energy. So when I read what you guys write about energy I generally take it as its written. However, the narrative I see you guys giving about America just being protectionist is not the one I have gotten when I hear about Keystone.

My takeaway has always been that there are 2 main objections to Keystone. First, that it is going through some important land that needs protected. I know just from growing up in the midwest how important the Ogallala aquifer is to our countries ability to produce food. So my assumption has always been the pipeline puts an unnecessary risk on that infrastructure so that is why people were apprehensive. Secondly, people down here seem to think that the oil coming out of Alberta is of a poorer quality and less environmentally friendly than what can be produced in America. They always use that 'heavy tar sands' type language around it. I am not at all in a position to defend that one as I know nothing about it!

I am assuming based on what I have seen in the past on here that you guys will have a lot to say about the second reason. And that is fine. In neither of the parts am I attempting to support the claims. Mostly I am just trying to square the reasons I have always heard given against the protectionist claims.

Is the narrative I have been given as just a normal non energy savvy American that far off base? Are all the other pipelines that US has built been just as potentially damaging as Keystone? Was there not another route they could have proposed for the pipeline that would have been less impactful?