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Originally Posted by 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?
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I'm looking forward to hearing answers to this, too.
My basic understanding is we are actually pretty responsible in how we harvest oil in Alberta, particularly when compared to Middle Eastern countries. It's also less harmful to the environment to transport by pipeline versus tankers across the oceans and rail over land (lower GHG and apparently safer per barrel transported or something like that). That said, I think stopping the pipeline won't have any sort of material negative affect on Americans and since it's so controversial and a win to Biden's base to stop it, I don't see why he wouldn't. It's an easy win for him with no major downside.
Just because there is a better way doesn't mean you can get buy-in. I'm sure that's the same for every industry ever. We probably lost this battle a decade or so ago when "dirty oil" became attached to our product. Now whether the anti-Alberta-oil sentiment came about due to any truth, or if it was propagated by oil companies in the USA and elsewhere to hurt Alberta to their own benefit is sort of moot. We're where we are now and our premier having a temper tantrum on live TV certainly doesn't ingratiate us to anybody, so if it doesn't help, it probably hurts.
Now this is an aside because why should you care about our premier, but OMG what an embarrassment this guy is. Just a dope of the highest order to go on TV to whine that "it's not fair". GFY. As if we'd care about American oil if the shoe were on the other foot and it had to be shipped up here across the land of our people that didn't want it. Also, we can't even get our own countrymen to allow us to build pipelines across our own country. How the fata do we expect residents in a foreign country to let us do what we won't allow at home?
Kenney lashing out a the president of the USA on his first day is so fataing dumb I can barely even comprehend that was real life. What a fataing moron. Where does he think that will get us?