Jim Hightower: Keystone XL pipeline would REDUCE gas supplies for Americans.

[Democrats_win]

-snip:

"TransCanada has quietly boasted that Keystone XL would cut gasoline supplies in our Midwestern states, thus raising prices at the pump and siphoning more billions of dollars a year from consumers pockets into the vaults of multinational oil interests."

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/29-4

In other words, oil currently going to American cities from Canada's oil sands would be exported to foreign nations. Our supplies would go down and prices would go up even more than they already are!

[abelenkpe]

1. K&R nt

[Lifelong Protester]

2. Yes, this is true. All of that oil would be exported.

My spouse, a retired economist and way more informed on issues such as this, says we would not see one drop of that oil, it would all go out of the port of New Orleans and off to other places.

[FBaggins]

3. It wouldn't be "exported to foreign nations" so much...

...it would increase prices in one part of the country and decrease it in others (theoretically balancing out an inequity of supply).

But this type of thing can have an international effect as well. Take the better example of natural gas. Production has risen so substantially that prices have collapsed here in the states (while they're still much higher around the world)... this is because we have very little ability to export natural gas (in fact until recently we were gearing up to import lots of the stuff). The natural next step is to expand our ability to export LNG. It will help close the trade gap and strengthen the economy... but it will also cause gas prices here in the US to climb. This is because the current low price is partially artificial, cause by a glut of supply and no ability to trade it.

In the case of oil/gasoline, the imbalance exists within the country, not so much between the US and foreign nations. So both the pain and pleasure of righting the imbalance would be internal.

[Viking12]

5. Actually, it most likely would be exported.

The final destination for the Keystone Pipeline is the refineries in a "free-trade zone" in Port Arthur, Texas. Refined products are fetching higher prices overseas than here in the U.S. It doesn't take an economics professor to figure out where that oil will end up.

[DCKit]

7. What you said.

There's no other logical reason to pump the crude all the way from Canada to a free trade zone on the southernmost edge of the country, only to pipe it back up again as gasoline. It's just not going to happen.

I can't help but think it would cost far less to build a refinery (or three) on our northern border than it would to build a pipeline the whole way across the U.S..

If the Republics actually want to be job creators, a few refineries in the north country would provide a lot more permanent jobs than a pipeline to TX - and isn't that what they've been shouting about all these months?

Further, with all the refinery shutdowns, it's clearly time for some new refinery infrastructure. After all, what's the point of piping that oil down to TX, when they clearly don't have the reliable capacity to turn it into gasoline, diesel, plastics and chemicals?

The arguments for the XL pipeline don't hold up to scrutiny.

[Viking12]

8. Much of the oil is already pumped to the midwest.

There is a refinery in Superior, WI that gets oil directly from the Alberta Tar Sands. I can't find it right now, but I read an article that posited that the Keystone XL pipeline would divert much of current supply south, impacting supplies of refined product in the midwest.

[DCKit]

9. So... another artificial shortage, right?

We know there's no shortage of oil, as we've seen the output from the OPEC countries, but OUR shortages/rises in gas prices are always the result of downed refineries and headlines.

No matter how you look at it, we're getting screwn by the 1%.

[Vincardog]

6. What part of the country do you see balancing the rise in prices in the MidWest

by exporting the oil instead to China or South America?
How would raising prices for Natural gas to benefit the already super profitable energy companies
by exporting more NG be a good thing for the people of the US?

[zbdent]

4. and nobody has actually said that the pipeline would reduce costs of gasoline for

the average U.S. consumer.