Our President, Mr. Teflon, is making another big move to keep gasoline prices at $5 a gallon. It’s not the big moves that do all of this, it’s the stealth moves that really are more effective. Even the mainstream media reports on the drilling in the Gulf and no drilling in Alaska. But, very few report the little efforts.
U.S. regulators have barred the TransCanada pipeline from restarting the Keystone Pipeline. Our best source of crude oil is Canadian sand heavy oil. Many liberals don’t approve of Canadian sand oil. This comes from the environmental zealots who believe the tar sand projects to be energy intensive and environmentally damaging. Hillary Clinton on her first visit to Canada as Secretary of State made this position very clear. Since Canadians control this, these naysayers look for other ways to stop the work. Any pipeline bringing this crude into the U.S. is their best option.
The Keystone Pipeline which brings this crude oil to Cushing, Oklahoma has had some spills. Eleven small leaks in 11 months. BP invested several billion dollars in the Whiting refinery to process this Canadian crude into gasoline with cokers. Politicians like Dick Durbin and Richard Daley tried to stop this project, but BP finally met all the requirements with significant more investment required. Without the Whiting refinery, Chicago gasoline would be $10 a gallon.
The Keystone Pipeline will bring more and more Canadian crude to a thirsty U.S. market. Cheap crude to keep from buying expensive Middle East crude and send dollars to terrorist countries. Like Libya.
Pipelines have, and always will have, small leaks. But, they are reported to the EPA and clean up must meet EPA standards. Now, the pipeline owners must perform metallurgical testing and root-cause analyis and make sure the 1,300 mile pipeline will not have further leaks.
Junk science, like climate change, suggests the heavy Canadian crude is more corrosive and will always have potential leak issues. Hence, the Plans to increase the flow to 1.1 million barrels a day and extend the pipeline to to the U.S. Gulf coast where more refining capacity exists have been halted. Despite years of experience with existing Canadian pipelines that show no more leak issues than the universe of pipelines, this junk science is enough for the Obama administration to stop the progress.
This kind of regulation, which stops efforts to bring cheaper and more secure crude oil to the U.S., goes on every day.
Who calls Obama out on these misdirected efforts? No one. He will just point a finger at speculators and oil companies to blame them for high gasoline prices.
It’s time we, the public, get educated and point the fingers(300 million of them) back at the real problem. A President who really wants $7 gasoline.
