Quote:
...On Monday, Calgary-based TransCanada announced it intends to begin building its Gulf Coast Project (GCP), the 765 km southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline that will extend from Cushing, Okla. to the Gulf Coast...
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I guess that is showing the confidence that Canada believes the Keystone will be built. From an environmental point of view, building the pipeline to the Gulf Coast is very sound instead of building it to the Canadian West Coast and filling supertankers to China.
Canada is not going to leave 700,000 barrels/day that they can make over $30+ USD/barrel (the rough difference between extraction costs) in the ground. That's at least $21 million a day or about $7,670 million/year.
That buys a lot of beer and back bacon.
BTW, there is also another consideration in regard to world politics. A source of 700,000 barrels a day would have given the administration another weapon in dealing with Iran or other countries. If the Keystone were online now, it would be much easier getting Europe and India to switch much or all of their energy purchases from the US instead of Iran.
Add to that, that the US could have provided finished product (due to surplus refining capacity from the lousy economy). Whether we were providing raw oil or finished fuel those foreign dollars would have helped our deficits.
If this were done from our domestic reserves that we are being prevented from tapping, the impact on deficits would be even better. Of course this does not even measure the impact of domestic LNG.
That is why we need a smart domestic energy policy instead of the one we currently afflicted with.