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Keystone XL pipeline will not reduce gasoline prices
A recent writer suggests building the Keystone XL pipeline from the Canadian Tar Sands would increase competition for oil companies, leading to reduced gasoline prices. This would give people more money to spend, aiding economic recovery. I wish it were true.
Unfortunately, there is no reason to think that the pipeline will increase the U.S. gasoline supply or reduce prices. When oil leaves the refinery, it enters the world market, and as Oil Change International reported last August, the refineries in Port Arthur, Texas, where the oil would be sent, are focused on exporting oil to Europe and Latin America.
To make matters worse, Port Arthur is in a Foreign Trade Zone, so U.S. citizens would not even get the benefit of export taxes, since they don’t have to pay any.
Pipeline proponents in their frequent Gazette ads suggest the Keystone XL would provide thousands of jobs. But a Cornell University report suggests this is seriously inflated. Using figures submitted by TransCanada Corp., the company applying to build the pipeline, they estimate it will create no more than 2,500 to 4,650 temporary construction jobs.
The real result of building the Keystone XL: the 1 percent who run Big Oil make millions, while 99 percent of us get 1,700 miles of U.S. heartland endangered if (when) the pipeline leaks, oil prices remain high, and carbon dioxide emissions continue their ominous buildup in the atmosphere.
Elisabeth Robbins
Marion
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No it won’t reduce gas prices. On the flip side, not building it won’t change the fact that those who run “Big Oil” will make millions or change the amount of CO2 emissions. All the “negatives” remain whether the pipeline is built or not. With or without the pipleline, the oil will be pumped, transported, refined, transported again and burned. The question is, who benefits from those middle steps?
And it will create jobs. Lots of jobs -still in the thousands by your source (those are just the direct jobs created). Yes, those jobs are “temporary”, just like all construction jobs are temporary. But construction will take years. That give the economy & employment the kind of boost it needs now, when we need it. It also means permanent jobs to run and maintain the pipeline in the US and for the refineries here in the US. The alternative is having it shipped overseas and refined elsewhere. How many millions (billions?) will the US spend trying to jobs with less likelihood of success? This is essentially a “freebie” when it comes to job creation and people complain its not enough?
Who in their right mind would be against this pipeline….would you rather we get our oil from our enemies or people that hate the USA…or get it from our friends to the north…Canada is ready to sign a deal with china ….China will gladly take that oil and if we don’t get off the stick it will be theirs while we bicker about it in this country….thousands of jobs are also at stake…..but because of some greenie form letter most people in Iowa never heard of the dreaded KEYSTONE PIPELINE….this isn’t even in our back yard…..I just can’t see why people would be a posed to it….
As an after thought I’ve never heard of a permanent construction project…..
If the Keystone XL pipeline isn’t going to reduce gas prices, how is it that releasing a million barrels a day for 30 days from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, as the Obama administration did last summer, was going to reduce gas prices?
I’m pretty sure it will reduce gas prices….only the ones against it are saying it won’t…..if we get that oil what will the middle east do with the extra amount we used to buy….the oil field in north Dakota is predicted to be as large or larger than the oil field in alaska….so this line will also get that oil to the refineries…..
This is one case I don’t see an effect on price, because one puts more oil on the market (releasing the reserves) the other just changes what route the oil takes (the pipeline).
Whether we pipe the oil through the US to refineries in the south, or Canada ships it across their country to the Pacific and on to China, the same amount of oil is going to be produced and put on the world market. As a result, any effect on price will be minimal.
But as Jeff mentions, I’d feel better with our oil originating in Canada than the middle east.
Yup, Canada will be easier to invade and occupy…
In theory, additional oil production will lower oil prices, but don’t look to this for a miracle cure. I don’t know the expected production from this source, but worldwide production is about 90 million barrels a day. This additional source of production will raise total worldwide production by a very small fraction and lower oil prices by a very small fraction.
Let me remind people that regardless what we do to increase production, demand for oil out of India and China is growing very rapidly as they become more industrialized. Hence, the long term trend for price of oil up and it will be going up faster than it has in the past.
I totally agree. And if we don’t develop our own resources, prices will rise faster than they otherwise would have, and the associated jobs will go somewhere else.
I don’t have much respect for the Nissan Leaf or Chevy Volt as cars, but such rechargeable electrics are the future. We must find a way to separate our transportation net from its dependence on petroleum.
The Keystone XL pipeline will not achieve that end.
Electric car technology, in particular battery technology, has to be developed before it can be deployed. At this time there is no feasible technology available. Any technology that emerges is also likely to go through a long period of trial and error and refinement before it gains wide acceptance.
Recall the Sony laptop PC batteries that exploded and caught fire. The higher the amount of energy, and the greater the energy density that is achieved, the more dangerous those kinds of incidents become. Also, we may be able to implement a crash program to adopt a technology once one is developed, but it is much more difficult to implement a crash program to develop the basic technology.
The amount of lead alone that would be required to shift our transportation network to electricity using lead acid batteries would cause many more environmental problems than it would solve.
Fred, talk to me when you know the technology. Honda’s hybrids use NiMH, or nickel-metal hydride, battery packs; the Chevy Volt a lithium-ion system.
You’re fifty years out of date if you think an electric must use lead-acid batteries. If THIS post is representative of how up-to-date you are on science and technology, that would explain why you refuse to acknowledge any validity to global warming theory.
OK, I am wrong about the lead acid batteries, but the Sony laptop PC batteries that were causing problems were also lithium ion batteries, and the comment about the problems with too high of an energy density still holds as attempts are made to increase total energy and energy density.
Jeff just because one is not up to speed on batteries does not mean they are too behind the time to realize that global warming thing is a hoaks….
Mean while back at the ranch….my daughter has a chevy something or other that runs on gas or electric….but you don’t have to plug it in…..many neat things about it….when you apply the brakes that creates electricity that is returned to the battery….Maybe Jeff can enlighten us as to what it’s called and how it works…..but I’m sure she said it didn’t need plugged in…I would call her but it’s late…I’ll await jeff’s smack down on the hoaks and await his car knowledge….
Fred and Jeff, don’t act so offended, just because I have the bad manners of expecting people to make informed contributions to the discussion.
Jeff, I have some familiarity with hybrids because I sold the Honda Insight and sold against the Toyota Prius. I’m a torque-and-horsepower guy, so hybrids and electrics don’t make my pulse quicken. However, hybrids are an intermediate technology which stretches fuel economy and helps develop components like batteries which need to be improved if we are to convert our vehicle fleet to electric power.
Fred, how many flaming laptops do you encounter on a daily basis? Trust me: many Kirkwood students tote laptops to classes every day, and every single one of those devices is battery-powered. Sure, cite Sony’s problems all you want, but you come off sounding like a neo-Luddite who can only gripe about technology, and refuses to se how the technology has developed over time.
Guys, to get us back on subject, we need to diversify how we power our vehicle fleet. You are living in the past if you think petroleum is the only way to power vehicles; fuel will get more and more expensive as we tap the reserves which are more difficult to exploit. And, rechargeable electrics also offer a means of controlling emissions at the electrical plant level.
Here’s a link: how about you guys educate yourselves?
http://www.edmunds.com/hybrid/?mktcat=plug-in-hybrid-generic&kw=plugin+hybrid&mktid=ga27909602
The battery technology ain’t here yet, and isn’t likely to be here for a while. There are very real dangers in trying to pack more and more energy into a unit of volume. And, how do you propose generating the electricity to recharge the batteries? Most environmentalists want to rule out coal and nuclear. Will we only be able to plug in and recharge our batteries when the wind is blowing?
I suppose I should of looked at your link….but…will we need more power plants to plug into those cars…another option might be natural gas or compressed natural gas….we have an over abundance of that….the year they completed building the Alaska pipeline I was going back to work on the next one the following year ….for natural gas it never happened…when you drill for oil you also as a sort of by product get natural gas….they have only taken the oil out of the grown there…that’s over 30years of untouched reserves….then in WY they have been drilling for gas in the coal beds….just think how much could be right here in Iowa in our coal seams…..I know you greenies will just be apauled at the thought…..but I do think other options are needed….even though I know we have over 500years of coal in this country…why not use the wind or nukes to produce more electricity …..eventually cheaply…..
Another option is industrial hemp for fuel…google it….we had that technology during WW2…..and in the twenties oil based paint was made from hemp oil….think what we could do with today’s technology….and it yields ten tons an acre on marginal land (southern Iowa)…that could be burned in power plants….I don’t understand why we keep throwing money at corn stover technology that only yields a couple tons per acre….keeping in mind the residue that’s needed for next years crop and to retard erosion ….
Jeff, I have to admit I am not a fan of the electric cars because of their performance but that Chevy Volt is actually a lot better than I thought it would be.
And I am curious why you think electric is the future and not hydrogen fuel cells.
Fred, the technology actually is there, its just not cheap yet. That is why a Volt costs so much.
Zach, the Volt has very limited range, and using the heater reduces the range still further.
There used to be a lot of buzz about hydrogen fuel cells. The city of San Diego had a fleet of hydrogen fuel cell busses. It turned out that the proton exchange membrane is very susceptible to minute amounts of contamination, and that pushed the operating cost of those busses to about $200 per mile. I haven’t heard anything about hydrogen fuel cells since then.
Fred the Volt is not very limited in its range at all. Once their is not enough juice in the battery, the gas operated generater kicks in and charges the battery as you are driving.
Sheesh, Fred, Iceland has been using Mercedes-built hydrogen fuel cell buses for several years now, and will bring a B-class fuel cell car to market in 2014.
zach, where is the support structure for fuel-cell cars? We already have an electric grid and homes that can be rewired for Stage Two 240V charging stations right now.
http://www.insideline.com/mercedes-benz/mercedes-benz-fuel-cell-car-ready-for-market-in-2014.html
And what are their maintenance costs? Here’s a report on Icelandic fuel cell buses that explicitly says maintenance costs were excluded when doing cost comparisons with diesel buses. http://ieahia.org/pdfs/ECTOS.pdf