Keystone Pipeline

A bill approving the Keystone Pipeline passed both the House and the Senate with bi-partisan support last week.  How often does this happen?  The Keystone Pipeline can economically transport crude oil from Canada to refineries in this country.  It would be a really good thing for the country. 

President Obama vetoed the bill.  Why would he do this?  He claims he did it for environmental reasons.  I don’t believe that is the reason.  The Keystone project has been proposed since 2010 and environmental studies date back to 2008.  How long can this study take?  Not one study to date has ever rejected the pipeline for environmental reasons.  It sounds like some environmental scientists are milking a good thing.  At least they are not intentionally “correcting” the data to support desired results like climate change scientists have done.

We presently have over 190,000 miles of liquid petroleum pipelines in this country.  President Obama has approved other pipelines in the past, so what is his problem with the Keystone Pipeline?  Even partisan politics doesn’t explain the veto.  Maybe we need to follow the money.

Oil is still going to come in from Canada by rail, and the environmental danger of a rail spill is much higher than a pipeline spill.  The cost of shipping by rail is much higher than a pipeline.  Is someone making a lot of money shipping oil by rail?

The Keystone Pipeline would create jobs and reduce the price of gasoline.  It would help to make the North American continent totally energy independent.  That doesn’t sound like a bad deal to me. 

The U.S. would no longer need to import any oil.  U.S. energy independence would lower the price of oil in the world market.  This would increase our political influence in Russia and Asia.  It would affect the economies of every country presently exporting oil to the US.   It would have a major effect on the Middle East, which might even stop funding for radical Islamic terrorists.  Is calling our enemies by their correct name politically incorrect?  Tough!

Energy independence for the North American continent would also affect some of our South American neighbors.  We presently import a lot of oil from Venezuela.  This is a major portion of their economy

Don’t forget Brazil.  We don’t import a lot of oil from Brazil, but the Export-Import Bank of America did approve loans of $2 billion to the Brazilian oil company Petroleo Brazileiro S.A. also known as Petrobras, to finance oil equipment exports from America.  A drop in oil prices could be a problem for Petrobras and the Export-Import Bank of America.  One of Petrobras’s major stockholders, George Soros, would not be happy with dropping oil prices.

I don’t think any rational person can agree with a Presidential veto of the Keystone Pipeline for economic, environmental, or political reasons.  If this is the case, we must follow the money.  This could be a Pulitzer Prize for a good investigative reporter.  I wish we had a media interested in discovering and disclosing the truth.