Keystone opponents pushing hard to create artificial scarcity and market manipulation

Bloomberg/Fuel Fix:

Environmentalists are making an unusual argument in their attempt to stop the Keystone XL pipeline: that trains can’t move all the oil out of Canada.

Keystone supporters say Canada could just as easily transport the additional oil to the U.S. on trains — meaning building the pipeline won’t contribute to climate change because the oil’s coming out, pipeline or no.

Opponents have worked furiously to knock down that argument ahead of the U.S. State Department’s release of a key environmental impact statement in coming weeks, pointing to recent oil-train crashes to show railroads aren’t a good alternative.

“The environmental guys are making that argument to State and to the White House,” Michael McKenna, a Keystone supporter and president of MWR Strategies Inc., a Midlothian, Virginia-based lobbying firm, said in an interview. “They’re getting a favorable response. It’s probably a legitimate argument. Maybe all this stuff doesn’t come to market and that affects the profile of greenhouse-gas emissions.”

Obama’s opponents: Keystone XL pressure mounts before State of the Union

A draft of the report in March said new railroad cars and pipelines will be developed to get the oil out even without the proposed U.S.-Canada link. It concluded that Keystone, in and of itself, wouldn’t add to the heat-trapping greenhouse gases produced because the carbon-heavy oil sands in Alberta would be developed even if Keystone were never built.
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“It has become increasingly clear that Keystone XL is the linchpin for tar sands expansion,” Anthony Swift, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in an interview. “New concerns about the safety of rail are likely to result in more regulated practices. That likely further decreases the feasibility of moving tar sands by rail.”
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That argument ignores the fact that the same amount of oil is going to be used in the US whether it comes from Canada or from the Middle East.  What the environmentalist are doing with their artificial scacity and market manipulation scheme is exporting jobs from the US and Canada to places that do not have our interest at heart.   It is in effect another bad faith argument by a group trying to make the alternative energy they favor look more competitive than it really is in a fair market.

If the State Department rejects Keystone, it should be built anyway right up to the border where a railhead could be built to get it to the last mile.