As the presidential campaign ramps up, Republican heir apparent Mitt Romney is being torn between advisors that want to make Obamacare the centrepiece of the campaign, and those that want to focus on the economy.
If the Romney campaign chooses to make the sluggish U.S. economic recovery one of its centrepieces, it is likely to use the thwarted Keystone XL pipeline.
The 1,700-mile-long, $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline is designed to transmit 830,000 barrels per day of oil extracted from Canadian Alberta oil sands to U.S. refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.
Having assiduously greased the requisite plans in Washington, the pipeline’s operator TransCanada apparently believed the deal was in the bag until a surreal coalition of environmentalists was joined by an unlikely ally in the form of Nebraskan Republican Governor Dave Heineman, effectively sandbagging Keystone XL.
Oil sands have been under development in Alberta since 1967 and investments there now exceed $97 billion. So, given the massive investment, where is this oil to go? On 10 November 2011, four days after 12,000 pipeline protestors encircled the White House, President Obama announced, “the decision on the (Keystone XL) pipeline permit would be delayed until at least 2013, pending further environmental review.”
The following month House of Representatives Republicans added to legislation a provision to force work to begin again on the Keystone XL pipeline, at which point President Obama deferred a decision on the pipeline until after the upcoming November presidential elections.
But, given the kerfuffle in Washington, Canadian pipeline operator Enbridge patriotically stepped up to the plate, proposing an alternative to Keystone XL, the $5.54 billion, 731-mile Northern Gateway pipeline, which would carry 525,000 barrels a day of Alberta’s oil sands to a supertanker port in Kitimat, British Columbia in order to tap Asia’s lucrative markets.
In a major “oops” moment for the safe transportation of oil sands petroleum, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on 10 July released the initial draft of what is considered the “definitive safety investigation” of a 27 July 2010 incident near Marshall, Michigan, when 800,000 gallons of heavy crude oil spilled into the Kalamazoo River from Enbridge Energy’s 6B 30-inch pipeline.
The EPA and Enbridge have put the cost of the clean-up at more than $800 million and earlier this month federal regulators announced a proposed $3.7 million penalty against Enbridge, which would be the largest ever for an onshore pipeline spill.
