The Keystone XL Pipeline

Gee they sound amazingly familiar.

except we do mean they literally cheated. Theres evidence that some 20+ candidate votes were tampered with via telling people of opposing parties the wrong days to vote via robocall.

edited 28th Feb '12 8:26:19 PM by Midgetsnowman

The number is up to 36 candidates that have cheated. Democracy is disappointed thoroughly.

But on topic, was there a specific reason why Alberta/Federal government isn't supporting building refineries in Canada instead of shipping crude to USA/China?

Oh Canada, you guys are so quaint when it comes to election fraud. Seriously, they have been doing that in the USA since phones were invented, and before phones they did it with letters. It is practically a tradition at this point.

They have to move the oil to the ocean if they want to sell it abroad for a larger profit. The thing is, British Columbia doesn't want a pipeline crossing their province because the people there are actually sane, so they are hoping to avoid that problem by going through the USA instead. It's all about the loons ("benjamins", here in the states) to these folks. Shipping that oil out by truck would reduce profit.

I love how some republicans are betraying their own people to get this thing through, by the way. It is strange when "very conservative god fearing folk" are forced to team up with those "aging granola eaters" because their own representatives are cotton balls stuffed up their ears.

edited 29th Feb '12 5:33:20 AM by MyGodItsFullofStars

what, you thought the republican party actually gave a shit about country farmers?

Theyre just conveniently easy to manipulate via their fear of change and their fervorous devotion to jesus. If they step on republican's real interests, then fuck em.

edited 29th Feb '12 9:46:39 AM by Midgetsnowman

I meant the Torries sound a lot like the right wing here in the U.S. corruption and all. Sadly someone from my state is involved in lining their own pockets with filthy lucra from the XL Pipeline.

edited 29th Feb '12 4:11:04 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Bloomberg reports that the Keystone pipeline would INCREASE the cost of oil for the US.

Bumping this for news: the route of the pipeline in Nebraska has been altered and has been given the go ahead.

Well, it makes it a little less bad, but it's still very bad. Fuck the pipeline and fuck the tar sands.

Would you rather rely solely on Russian or Middle Eastern oil?

I'd RATHER not rely on oil so much either way. As it stands, we already get most of our oil from the Americas, though.

We know there is oil under the rockies. A LOT of oil. It's pretty deep, but we've gone deeper for oil before. Why are we not tapping it anywhere near its potential? Or making plans to do so?

edited 20th Apr '12 4:23:59 AM by Vehudur

Fuck the Keystone. I'd rather send the oil the long way (tankers, trucks, trains, whatever) rather than all this mutilation they want to do to the landscape.

Not everything is worth more fucking oil.

We've gotta get off that shit. But this is more the fault of us Canadians for exploiting the ruinous tar sands. On behalf of our country I apologize.

You're Canadian? Hm, cool.

Wait, explain this. I thought the oil sands was a good thing for Canada. And us Americans, since you guys generally like us and we don't have to send troops to protect our Canadian interests (and thus, y'know, risk the wrath of Canada's military).

It ruins the environment, and the pipeline itself is gonna be a big risk to America's farmland.

You're misinformed, then. Tar Sand exploration is much like strip mining. Its total biological devastation for the area mined for it.

Not to mention, you barely extract more energy than you spend to get it, so its almost a zero sum game (except in the profit margins of oil companies)

so its good for canada (oil companies)

edited 20th Apr '12 10:06:13 AM by Midgetsnowman

It's not "like" strip mining.

It IS strip mining, of gigantic areas. The soil and other overburden is stripped off, the sands are dug up and a lot of tar and oil is spilled all over in the process and you're left with a toxic, mordor-like wasteland. When rain inevitably washes some into watersheds, it combines the problems of siltation with those of an oil spill. Considering how hard it is for plants to become established in that climate anyways, it's quite possible that things will never grow in some of those areas again.

We need oil, and we're running out of other options, but damn this stuff SUCKS.

edited 20th Apr '12 11:52:04 AM by Vehudur

The fact that we're making wastelands that make Mordor look downright hospitable (weren't there plants of some sort in Mordor?) should be enough to get people off their asses about alternative energy, but instead they defend the creation of these intersections of Mordor and Fallout's wastelands because they don't want to give up burning dead dino goo in their big honking SUV/truck.

Well... it's not as simple as dead dino goo, but that's pretty much it.

I know. It was a deliberate oversimplification.

Still, how willing people are to cause such desolation for a quick buck is disappointing at best.

Its much hader to visualize " eventual riches" versus "I WON THE LOTTEREH"

Ironically, this is also why lottery winners go bankrupt so often. Most humans, when given the choice between huge financial bounty now, or slower, but longer term bounty, take the lump sum and run

Yeah, complete lack of forethought is, too often, a very human thing.

Now all we need is a way to combine oil sands and fracking. Right?

...

Additionally, the oil you get from the sand is very low quality heavy* oil. This is because there's no impermeable lid above it to prevent all the lighter hydrocarbons from evaporating. This makes it more difficult and more polluting to refine it.

*

edited 20th Apr '12 4:05:58 PM by Vehudur

Dude, I'll personally have Cuomo shot if he okays fracking.