Several months ago, I wrote about the current Administrations efforts to sink coal, natural gas and oil. They are still planning to do that. Today the Obama Administration announced that they needed more time to ponder the question of the Keystone XL pipeline that will bring Canadian crude oil to the US where we would refine it and market it. They have studied this issue for 18 months without making a final decision. The Washington Post’s publication Politico.com said today: President Barack Obama was caught between a green and a blue place on the Keystone XL oil pipeline — the environmentalists who insisted he reject the proposal in order to earn their support in 2012 and labor unions excited at the prospect of jobs.
On Thursday, Obama’s State Department punted a verdict on Keystone until 2013, and while his administration is busy claiming the decision has nothing to do with politics, try telling that to everyone in Washington.
The Politico gave the reason: Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune had recently told reporters Obama’s decision on Keystone would “have a very big impact” on whether the nation’s largest environmental group funnels resources more toward congressional races rather than the race for the White House.
To read more of the Politico.com story click here.
The following excerpt is from my posting Obama Plans to Nationalize the Energy Companies
Classic wrong headedness is illustrated by diddling over access to Canada’s rich tar sands. From the IBD posting “China has its eye on Canada’s oil”:
Together, the U.S. and Canada have enough oil and natural gas locked up in shale formations, tar sands, Alaska, the Canadian Arctic and the Outer Continental Shelf to make OPEC pound sand. But we won’t drill for ours and apparently; we don’t want Canada’s.
With more than 170 billion barrels, Alberta has the world’s third-largest oil reserves, behind only Saudi Arabia and Venezuela and ahead of Russia and Iran. Daily production of 1.5 million barrels from the oil sands is expected to nearly triple to 3.7 million by 2025. The only question is, will this crude be flowing south to U.S. refineries or west for export to China?
At issue is the Keystone XL pipeline, parts of which have already been built, that would bring Alberta oil to Texas Gulf Coast refineries. The pipeline also could transport oil extracted from shale formations in the Rocky Mountain West. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the region, dubbed the Persia of the West, may hold more than 1.5 trillion barrels of oil, six times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia, and enough to meet U.S. oil needs for the next two centuries. By 2015, oil executives and industry analysts say, the oil-rich lands of the West, including North Dakota’s booming Bakken formation, could produce 2 million barrels a day, more than the pre-Deepwater Horizon production rate in the Gulf of Mexico.
Environmental groups oppose Keystone XL on the grounds that tar-sands extraction harms the environment through water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and potential pipeline leaks. The State Department, which must approve any pipeline entering the U.S. across international borders, has withheld its approval pending a final decision Nov. 1. The Chinese aren’t waiting. Sinopec, a Chinese state-controlled oil company, has a stake in a $5.5 billion plan to build the Northern Gateway Pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific Coast province of British Columbia. Alberta Finance Minister Lloyd Snelgrove met this month with Sinopec and CNOOC, China’s other big oil company, and representatives of China’s banks.
While the U.S. dithers with concerns about “dirty oil” from Alberta’s rich tar sands, energy-hungry China makes Ottawa an offer it might not refuse. Memo to Washington: Pipelines can run west as well as south.
Some of you maybe saying, if you have read this far, ‘well we have to get off fossil fuels before the Earth experiences a catastrophe from man-made global warming’. I don’t know how much attention you have been paying to this subject but the Global temperatures have not been increasing for the past 10 to 13 years! The temperature is not rising while at the same time, the boogeyman in all of this controversy, atmospheric CO2 content has been increasing throughout this period. Just so you don’t think I have invented the idea of a decade or more of flat temperatures, those that favor the theory of man-made global warming agree. Last week, Greenwire published the thoughts of the major warmer scientists (Hansen, Trenberth, Santer, Solomon, Wild, etc.) about the fact that the temperature is at a standstill. They are at a loss to explain why the temperature is not rising. They have many theories but no answers. Some in that group are beginning to see that the quieter-than-usual Sun may be the real reason. To see the Greenwire story, “Provoked scientists try to explain lag in global temperatures” click here.
cbdakota
Climate Change Sanity 