Keystone Pipeline would likely raise gas prices in the midwest.

[Renew Deal]

Last edited Fri Mar 9, 2012, 01:45 PM - Edit history (1)

Pipeline foes beat back bogus gas price claims

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Indeed, they do—but Keystone will have little to do with that price. While there’s some disagreement among energy experts over what precisely the impact of the pipeline on gas prices would be, nearly all agree that it would be insignificant. And by decreasing the surplus of Canadian oil in the Midwest, the pipeline could raise even gas prices throughout that region. As Philip Verleger, head of the energy consulting firm P.K. Verleger LLC, told Bloomberg News, “The Canadian plan was to use their market power to raise prices in the United States and get more money from consumers.

But even Verleger thinks Keystone would only raise the price of gas by a few cents per gallon. As Frances Beinecke of the Natural Resources Defense Council points out, the idea that importing more oil from Canada will lower fuel prices is patently false: over the past decade, the amount of oil we buy from Canada has increased by 50%, but gas prices have nearly tripled. And implications that the pipeline would alleviate the pressure of current gas prices are simply disingenuous: even if the Senate voted to approve the pipeline immediately, it wouldn’t go into operation until 2014.

Keystone XL would also have little to no impact on “dependence on foreign oil” or any of the other bogeymen frequently trotted out by those urging its construction: as the State Department wrote in January in the report accompanying its recommendation that the president delay the decision, “denying the permit at this time is unlikely to have a substantial impact on U.S. employment, economic activity, trade, energy security, or foreign policy over the longer term.”
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http://www.salon.com/2012/03/09/pipeline_foes_beat_back_bogus_gas_price_claims

[Laura PourMeADrink]

1. thanks for posting this.. I have been trying to educate myself

on this issue. Problem with all the analysis is that the vast majority of people will only hear "Pipeline will
add many jobs, and Obama is against it." They don't know that the job growth numbers are inflated,
and they don't know that this isn't oil gushing out of an oil well (like on TV and movies).

It is not really a cut and dried issue, but to me, from just the US viewpoint only, the biggest negative is
the pipeline's planned position above the Aquifer, which could, in the event of a leak, poison the water that feeds our
heartland farms. The republican governor of Nebraska wants it rerouted.

The bigger issue, to me, is what it is doing to Canada and the planet. I read that 71% of the people in Alberta want production
stopped until more analysis is done on the environmental impact.