Canada Warns Obama on Keystone XL Pipeline

[marble falls]

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/08/01/Canada-Warns-Obama-on-Keystone-XL-Pipeline.aspx#page1

By JOHN DALY, OilPrice.com
August 1, 2013

On 6 July, a Montreal, Maine & Atlantic train carrying 72 tank cars filled with oil exploded after its brakes apparently failed, sending it rolling into the small Quebec town of Lac-Megantic, where it derailed and then exploded. In the conflagration that followed, an estimated 47 people were killed.

Whether Canadians like it or not, the use of such trains has soared in recent years. The Railway Association of Canada reports that as recently as four years ago Canadian railways moved just 500 carloads of crude oil, but that number has now soared to about 140,000 carloads annually.

While currently only about three percent of Canadian crude is currently transported by rail, one industry predicts railway carriage of oil products rising to as high as 25 percent by 2035.

Now, in a breathtaking display of chutzpah, the Canadian ambassador to the U.S. is warning President Obama if he does not approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, then he can expect similar oil trains and even trucks to enter the U.S. Ambassador Gary Doer said, “His choice is to have it come down by a pipeline that he approves, or without his approval, it comes down on trains. That’s just the raw common sense of this thing, and we’ve been saying it for two years and we’ve been proven correct. At the end of the day, it’s trains or pipelines.”

Greenpeace Canada publicized a May 2012 Transport Canada memo that reported that the department had "identified no major safety concerns with the increased oil on rail capacity in Canada, nor with the safety of tank cars that are designed, maintained, qualified and used according to Canadian and U.S. standards and regulations. Indeed, Canada and the U.S. work collaboratively to ensure the harmonization of rail safety requirements." In the wake of the Lac-Megantic tragedy Greenpeace Canada recommended that the federal government implement an immediate ban on shipping oil in the older, type 111A tanker cars that that the Canadian Transportation Safety Board has identified as spill-prone, reinstate mandatory two-person minimum train crews; and begin a comprehensive, independent safety review of all means of hydrocarbon transportation, including public hearings.

Greenpeace Canada Climate and Energy Coordinator Keith Stewart observed, “Transporting oil is always risky, but both rail and pipelines can be a lot safer than they are today. Breaking our addiction to oil is the only real solution and something we must do to combat climate change, but as we make the transition to clean energy we must reduce the harm from transporting and using oil.”

<snip>

Such a deal.

This article originally appeared at Oilprice.com. Read more from Oilprice.com:

Will Quebec Tragedy Derail Heavy Oil Upswing?
TransCanada Might Rethink Potential Keystone Launch Date
$1 Billion of Natural Gas Wasted in North Dakota Through Flaring in 2012

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. This Canadian Ambassador has a lot of nerve.

I hope Obama will (politely, of course) put him in his place.

And I sure agree with Greenpeace Canada Climate and Energy Coordinator Keith Stewart.

Good luck to all of us!

[Pilotguy]

2. Mr. Ambassador...

Argofuckyourself!

[marble falls]

3. Canadian conservatives are closer to the Kocks and the Tea Party in moral values and ethics....

than one might think.

[Historic NY]

4. Let Canada send them to some other country..........

WTF do they get off dictating a business deal?? Baggers ought to worry about the northern border fence.

When Canada accepts our nuclear waste perhaps we can talk..then again there is always a cold day in hell.

[MFM008]

5. hey oil pigs

take your oil train and run it UP your kazooooooo. You dont tell us what to ddddddoooooooooo..........

[delrem]

6. Mr. Oilsands, Stephen Harper, speaks for "western" oil interests. Period.

In this particular he is no more "Canadian" than that the Alberta oil sands are in Canada, are owned by western interests, and are worth 100s of billions of US$$$. (yes, Harper is a fucking stooge)
They are only worth that if they can get the sludge to market. After western interests have spent US$$billions$$ in developing the Alberta oil sands, with the total destruction of the ecosphere as "collateral damage", it's highly unlikely that western oil interests won't get their profit.

That's all the Canadian ambassador was saying.

There's actually a bidding war on this, with "ecological interests" used as a piece captured en passant.
In fact there's nobody acting purely in the interest of Canada, in these dealings. Not on the provincial or federal scene. The left in Canada is AWOL.

China is interested.
The greatest creative use of Canadian political minds, so far, has been to argue an equation "jobs vs environmental concerns", which is something I would expect of Canada in the early 1900's (but done better!!!), but isn't acceptable to me in 2113.