And guess who else might be opposed to the Keystone XL pipeline?

[MikeOlsen]

That oil is going to get transported one way or another, it already is.

But what interest would Bill "I've given billions to charity" Gates and Warren "please make me pay more taxes" Buffett have in stopping or at least stalling the pipeline?

The entity overseeing Bill Gates' personal investment portfolio is Cascades Investment LLC, based in Kirkland, Washington. By 2006, the stock portion of Cascade's portfolio was worth about $3.4 billion, with $1.4 billion of that invested in shares of Canadian National Railway Co. (CN).
Gates has been investing in CN since at least 2000, and during that time CN has been on a buying spree. CN bought up provincially-owned BC Rail in 2004, a controversial decision by then-Premier Gordon Campbell that made CN the only rail carrier in Northern BC - a decision that continues to rankle much of the electorate.
In 2006, CN bought 2 short-line railways in Northern Alberta: Mackenzie Northern Railway in the northwest and the Lakeland & Waterways Railway in the northeast. By the time of the Buffett/Gates visit, CN had also purchased Athabasca Northern Railway Ltd., linking Fort McMurray to Edmonton.
For his part, Warren Buffett had been busily buying up shares in the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF), which since 2006 has been moving diluents - diluting agents necessary for mixing with tar sands bitumen - from US refineries in the Gulf Coast, California and Kansas to the Canadian border (at Superior, Wis., Noyes, N.D., Sweetgrass, Mont., and New Westminster, BC). The carloads of diluents are then handed over to CN and transported to Edmonton for shipment to the tar sands.
So by August 2008, when Buffett and Gates made their surprise visit to northern Alberta, they were not just celebrities making a casual tour, but already involved in the future of the area.

http://www.watershedsentinel.ca/content/tar-sands-express-enbridge-northern-gateway-pipeline-or-railway-or-both

So America's 2 most visible Billionaires would seem to stand to increase their wealth even further if the project fails.

[BlueToTheBone]

1. The two don't exactly coincide

you know. The Keystone will be an environmental disaster (guaranteed) and the other is pocket lining (greed)

[Trajan]

2. Why does this thread reek ?

Yes ... It does ....

[MikeOlsen]

4. Because you would rather believe that Gates and Buffett

are altruistic, socially conscious billionaires and not the effing upper 1% of the 1% stripping the wealth from the rest of us?

Back to you. It's your nose.

[Brickbat]

3. We talked about this at my caucus last month, and forwarded on a resolution expressing our support

for train transport over truck and pipeline.