LEFTY WASHINGTON POST FINDS OBAMA TOO LEFTY ON KEYSTONE PIPELINE

THE CASE FOR ultimately approving the Keystone XL pipeline — always strong — has grown stronger.


A key environmentalist argument against Keystone XL has been that the project would encourage the extraction of bitumen, a particularly dirty oil-like substance, from the “oil sands” in Alberta. If activists could “shut in” Canadian bitumen, limiting the ability of oil companies to sell the product, they argued, perhaps petroleum firms wouldn’t be able to fully develop the oil sands.


There is already enough spare pipeline capacity running out of the oil sands to accommodate increasing production for much of this decade, a government report concluded in 2010. While Kinder Morgan’s expansion certainly wouldn’t sate all the future demand for pipeline capacity, it would add more time before the environmentalists’ strategy could seriously impact production. And it demonstrates a critical point: Even if environmentalists manage to stop one pipeline or another, given high world oil prices, the enthusiastic support of the Canadian government, the many transport options and the years available to develop infrastructure, it’s beyond quixotic to believe that enough of the affordable paths out will be blocked. Environmentalists might succeed, however, in relocating some construction jobs outside the United States.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-better-case-for-keystone-xl/2012/05/01/gIQA7s8AvT_story.html