The Keystone XL Pipeline

Well, he vetoed it the first time when they tried to force him to make a quick decision. Mostly now it's hoping he sticks by that decision if it comes by him again.

In event that that is what happens, would this issue finally be totally dead, or would that just signal another round of rigamarole?

He didn't veto it last time, they forced him to make a decision on the pipeline, and he said "no".

Okay, well, refusal to bow to pressure then, I guess.

Goddammit, they're thinking of attaching this to the payroll tax cuts. FUCK. This is why we need line item voting.

edited 14th Feb '12 9:30:34 AM by AceofSpades

If there really is as much oil available there as has been reported, then like it or not, and I don't particularly do like it, that oil is going to get extracted. Where the pipeline goes doesn't really matter, it is going to go somewhere. Kicking folks off their land to route the pipeline is beyond bad, but it is hardly unprecedented. If you are in the way of any form of big business, then brother, you are in trouble.

There are a lot of folks in England on the route of the new HST line that are whining, bitching and moaning about them losing their houses/rugby fields/cricket pitches/whatever, to make room for the railway line but they are purty much stuffed. That railway line is getting built and they will move voluntarily or they will be evicted.

I see no real hope for the oil pipeline not being built somewhere where folks will get annoyed about it.

Somehow I don't think a railway is quite the same as an oil pipeline. In any event, the Nebraskans have brought the intensely valid point that the current proposed route is near a vital water source. Water is more necessary than oil. As much as they're fighting this thing being built at all, I think they might consider it a victory if it gets moved away from that aquifer.

And, as was pointed out before, there's a bunch of hurdles it has to go through. There's plenty of possibility it could be vetoed. I think some issues go through the Congress several times before being finalized or agreed upon.

So long as they don't do something like attach it to the tax plan. God, I hate them so much right now.

You would be surprised. The reaction to the announcement of the route of the high speed rail line has already led to death threats. Goodness knows what will happen when they finally get around to building the fecker. The Campaign for Rural England are going all Taleban on this issue, to a quite insane degree. And every crusty environmentalist and their smelly mother on this side of the Atlantic have said they are going to picket the route, chain themselves to trees, destroy plant machinery and all that good stuff.

In short, they feel precisely the same way a lot of you folks feel about the pipeline. Never underestimate the powers of the heritage lobby in England, results will never be pretty. As a Scot, I get to point and laugh at them. When such laughter is necessary of course.

Why the blazes are they pissy about getting high speed rail? I'd love to get some of that in this country. And especially to the midwest.

Part of the difference is that I'm pretty sure that that railroad isn't threatening the water supply for one of the largest food growing regions in the entire world.

Plus, the US has an excess of available land and a woefully-outdated transport infrastructure, whereas Europe has the opposite circumstances.

That and as a country we're rather behind on the rail production. It would actually be beneficial for us as a country to build electric rails or trains instead of this pipeline. (Though where I live DART is expanding pretty rapidly, it's probably not on the scale of a rail that crosses a country.)

Europe may have. Britain does not. And we are the country that invented not just the railway but the passenger locomotive for fucks sake. Our rail network is underfunded by the taxpayer, overpriced for the consumer and completely out of step to what Britain needs. And this may be the high speed railway, whose route is going to piss a sizeable number of people, on that route, off no end

edited 14th Feb '12 10:15:07 AM by TamH70

Maybe we can trade you our pipeline for your rail tracks and trains.

Don't tempt me. I would just to annoy Jonathon Porrit. Besides, our North Sea oil is running out. And when we try to get oil and gas near the shore we tend to cause earthquakes. Pipelines would be the least of our worries, 8-)

http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/22/opinion/turner-keystone-pipeline/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn

And Ted Turner chimes in on the issue. Evidently he's got a ranch near a proposed route for the pipeline.

Oh shut up, Ted. Not helping.

What? What was wrong with that article? He pointed out facts and didn't seem to be using overly inflammatory rhetoric.

Looks like Trans-Canada Corp. is going to build the southern portion of the pipeline while they renew their application for a permit.

Changed the link so it links to the Houston Chronicle's main site, instead of the mobile one.

edited 28th Feb '12 6:07:14 PM by tclittle

The pipeline won't do much good. We already have a pipeline from Canada into the U.S. What would really help are turning the refineries in the U.S. back on instead of shutting them off to create a shortage.

edited 28th Feb '12 4:50:39 PM by TuefelHundenIV

the oil pipeline would only knock 3-4 cents off the price of gas. In addition, this would be highly corrosive tar sands pumping through the line.

Yeah sounds like a great substance to pump through various sensitive environs. The oil companies have mroe then shown they do not want to take responsibility for safety or owning up to their fuck ups. Lets hope this thing stays dead permanently.

Also, here◊'s a handy picture.

Never mind, it's a broken link. It is a diagram of all the oil spills around the nation.

edited 28th Feb '12 5:03:27 PM by Enkufka

It says seeks to start, which isn't the same thing as starting. Ugh, I hope that this gets turned down though. We already have plenty of oil in this country, and we don't need this polluting pipeline built here.

I don't mind the southern extension nearly as much as the northern section getting built. Southern extension doesn't translate to strip mining the Alberta wilderness and a massive C02 dump into the atmosphere, it will just allow them to ship already extracted oil from the midwest to the coast. I'm not thrilled by it, but it pales in comparison to the environmental damage that cheap tar sands extraction would mean.

How aboot the Canadians vote in a party that will tighten the environmental controls in Alberta soon, eh?

Plant fewer pipelines, plant more trees. The nickname for southern Alberta amongst certain sectors of the British Armed Forces is Mamofa. Miles and miles of f$*k all.

edit. Mitt Romney has just said that the Keystone Pipeline is getting the go-ahead if he becomes President. Just like Santorum did earlier on.

Vote Democrat or else, seems to be the message.

edited 28th Feb '12 7:44:38 PM by TamH70

Here's the image Enkufka linked to in tinyurl form because the original link runs afoul of the hyphenator: http://preview.tinyurl.com/7xa2aod

Well apparently the Tories cheated their way into Federal government and they've basically been labelling everyone who opposes the pipeline as foreign terrorists.