Have to ask this about the Keystone Pipeline

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If we refuse to let it be built, which I think is the right decision, what is to stop Canada from building a pipeline to the St Lawrence River, and shipping the oil out the seaway. Looking at this map, it would be about the same distance.

[Buzz Clik]

1. Nothing. Or trucking it out. Or shipping it out by rail.

Two things will happen if we block the pipeline:

1) Refineries in the US will not get the crude
2) The rate of development of the tar sands will continue at the present rate rather than accelerating by about 50%.

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3. It is the second thing I wonder about

the trucking would slow it down but I don't see how the st lawrence sea way would. If we really don't want to see this oil mined I think we should be encouraging a conservancy to buy the rights. Even if it costs us money to do that.

[Leslie Valley]

2. First of all Canada isn't building the pipeline. Second, the company that is, TransCanada

would probably run a line to the west coast of Canada.

But more likely the oil would continue to be shipped by rail, and guess who owns the railroad companies that stand to benefit the most? None other than Warren Buffett and Bill Gates! They would love to see the pipeline stopped.

Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway, BNSF and the Tar Sands

Many eyebrows were raised in August 2008, when two of the richest men on the planet, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, sojourned to Alberta’s tar sands patch. The Calgary Herald wrote “they took in the oilsands, apparently with awe.” According to a reliable but confidential source quoted in the story, the two men “visited the booming hub to satisfy ‘their own curiosity’ but also ‘with investment in mind.’”

And while he told the media he wasn’t interested in doing so at the time of the trip, Buffett soon became a major investor in tar sands related assets. A year after his visit to the oil sands, in November 2009, Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway purchased BNSF Railway as a wholly owned subsidiary.

http://www.desmogblog.com/warren-buffett-exposed-oracle-omaha-and-tar-sands

His buddy Warren Buffett owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., and now we learn that Bill Gates also has an affinity for trains. The Microsoft co-founder is the largest shareholder in Canadian National Railway Co., according to a report in the Toronto Globe and Mail, which says Gates now owns 46 million shares of the railway based in Montreal. That’s 10 percent of the railway, an investment valued at about $3.2 billion.
Gates controls 37.4 million CN shares through Cascade Investment LLC. As co-trustee of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates has another 8.6 million CN shares, according to the Globe and Mail.
According to Forbes, Gates now gets 70 percent of his wealth from investments other than with Microsoft. Gates has invested in the Mexican stock market and in Femsa, the Mexican bottler of Coca-Cola. Gates also is invested with Grupo Televisa.

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2011/04/gates-invests-big-in-railway.html

It does present a bit of a quandary for Obama regarding a couple of his large financial backers does it not?

Nothing is a simple as it seems, is it?

[JayhawkSD]

5. TransCanada would probably run a line to the west coast of Canada.

No. British Columbia has already rejected that plan; will not allow the pipeline through its territory.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

6. No, they haven't.

The JRP process has become a freak show, but there is no reason to believe that Northern Gateway won't be approved.

[Leslie Valley]

8. Then I'm sure you are aware that it's a temporary delay

brought on by a challenge by Spectra Energy Corp. who already has a network of pipelines through that territory and has sought to block TransCanada to protect it's own interests.

[Fire Walk With Me]

4. Also, the Koch brothers want it built because they'll save $2 billion a year over foreign oil.

Their investment in heavy-oil processing equipment in Texas relies upon heavy oil, such as the tar sands type, not the light crude found there in Texas:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101797279

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7. I definitely don't want to see it built

I think the small chance of a leak in the pipeline is enough reason not to build it. But I don't see how it stops the oil from coming to market without being combined with some buyout of the rights to develop the oil.

[Fire Walk With Me]

9. I don't know if it's been mentioned but the worst part about it is not the potential for leaks

but is the carbon emissions caused by the process of refining the tar sands which will be piped to Texas. "Game over for the planet", some have called it

[dsc]

10. but it will get burnt no matter how the oil is shipped

the only way I can see of not having that oil burnt is to buy the rights to the oil and then not pump it. All stopping the pipeline will do is make them move the oil east instead of south. The length would be about the same either way and would get them to the St Lawrence River which is entirely in Canada (it runs between Quebec and Ontario for part way and between Quebec and New Brunswick for the rest).

[Fire Walk With Me]

11. I believe the Tarsands blockade and Keystone XL blockade are attacking at every angle

including occupying executive meetings