After President Obama delayed construction of the XL pipeline after Republicans gave him two unacceptable options in one of their retrograde Republican ploys to guarantee that Obama doesn't get a second term which Sen Mitch McConnell said was his chief job.Obama returned the favor by rejecting the pipeline plan.
Now, compliments of the Mitchell Daily Republic two articles. One presided the Thune lunacy mentioned in a previous post and one followed it today.
[[[ Note of Mar 10, 2012:. The links below in the Mitchell Daily Republic have become pay for view. As of today at least, the Bloomberg original story is still freely available.]]
Blomberg News--XL Pipeline planned to increase Midwest Fuel Prices
XL from Cushing to Gulf to reduce "glut" of oil
That story indicates Calgary based Trans-Canada, while prevented from building XC pipeline across US midwest, will build a pipeline from Cushing, OK pipeline overloaded with a "glut" of oil so that oil can be moved to gulf coast and exported.
And again compliments of Mitchell Daily Republic A Bloomberg Article
That story indicates the function of the XL Pipeline is not to bring lower fuel prices to US customers as we have heard from screaming mad Republicans for a few months, but rather to increase prices by as much as 20 cents per gallon in central states. This would erase cost advantage to regiional refiners such as Marathon Petroleium and HollyFrontier.
“The Canadian plan was to use their market power to raise prices in the United States and get more money from consumers,” Philip Verleger, founder of Colorado-based energy consulting firm PK Verleger, said. Prices may gain 10 to 20 cents in central states, he said.
The story notes that $7.6 Billion Keystone is to move 830,000 barerels of oil a day from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast. This might allow companies like EXXon Mobil, Suncor Energy, Cenovus Energy to reap as much as $4 Billion more in annual revenue..
830,000 barrels of oil with around 40 gallons per barrel with something around 20 cents per gallon ($8 per barrel) increased profit above current profits would mean about $1.6 million dollars per day in increased price going through the pipeline. That kind of increase costs to all of us in the midwest make the property taxes SD county commissioners have been drooling over seem insignificant. Even so, SD Republican officials and legislators don't seem to be able to decide that the pipeline company should pay into a fund to cover costs of environmental catastrophe possible to water and other resources.
Might it be time to send the GOP apologists for higher profits to fossil fuels industry to howl for 40 years in the wilderness?
I hope you think there is some fine irony in the sequence of these news articles with the Thune nonsense attacks on Obama and Democrats.
*** Stay tuned even if you are now convinced to buy an all-electric vehicle--- Doug Wiken
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