Who Benefits from Keystone XL?

[unhappycamper]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Who-Benefits-from-Keystone-by-Alan-Grayson-China_Keystone-Xl-Pipeline-140228-134.html



Who Benefits from Keystone XL?
By Alan Grayson
OpEdNews Op Eds 2/28/2014 at 12:14:51

~snip~

The Chinese economy consists of taking raw materials and energy, making that into stuff, and then selling that stuff - a/k/a "manufacturing." Chinese leaders understand that in order for that model to work, China needs steady supplies of raw materials and energy. By how do you get a steady supply of energy, in a world where those supplies are dominated by a cartel, and are concentrated in a part of the world prone to war? In America, we've been trying to puzzle that out for four decades, without success.

Well, the Chinese have figured it out. They're going to get their energy from Canada, a stable country, and pass it through the United States, another stable country. They will pay the Canadians the world price for oil. They will pay us nothing, or next to nothing. So Uncle Sam is Uncle Sucker.

And not for the first time. For the past decade, China has pursued an utterly unscrupulous and incredibly successful strategy in "trade" with the United States. China has been importing from the United States roughly $50 billion in goods each year, much of it food, raw materials and energy. China has been exporting to the United States roughly $350 billion in goods each year, mostly manufactured goods. And China has been buying roughly $300 billion in U.S. assets each year, mostly U.S. Treasuries. So we buy their stuff, putting their people to work. And they buy our assets, driving us deeper and deeper into debt. America loses - twice.

Now China has peeled off a tiny portion of that trade surplus, just $30 billion, and audaciously is trying to parlay that into permanent energy independence. China has put that money into Canadian tar sands.

[Nihil]

1. K&R for the occasional browsers of E/E ...

... as the regulars are already very familiar with this setup ...

[FogerRox]

2. Sending a supertanker from NOLA to China is far fetched

Sending supertankers south, around Terra Del Fuego then northeast to China is just too many miles. But shipping a processed light sweet crude to the western EU via the Louisiana OffShore Oil Platform near NOLA does make sense.

The Chinese market would require a pipeline to the Pacific coast like the proposed Northern Gateway:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/10/1261720/-6-reasons-we-re-winning-the-battle-of-the-tar-sands-Major-Labor-Union-joins-the-fight