Home » Posts tagged 'keystone pipeline'

Tag Archives: keystone pipeline

Olduvai
Click on image to purchase

Olduvai III: Catacylsm
Click on image to purchase

Post categories

Post Archives by Category

WTI Prices Surge On Keystone Spill

November 23, 2017

WTI Prices Surge On Keystone Spill

Spill

Oil prices surged on Wednesday on news that the Keystone pipeline might not restart for several weeks. The outage at the damaged pipeline ended several years of contango for WTI, pushing the benchmark into a state of backwardation for the first time since 2014.

TransCanada made a lot of headlines in the past week. The Keystone pipeline ruptured and spilled more than 200,000 gallons of crude oil in South Dakota last week, just days before TransCanada was given a greenlight for the Keystone XL in the state of Nebraska. South Dakota regulators now say that they could revoke the permit for the Keystone pipeline if it is found that the company violated the terms of its license. The spill was the third for the Keystone pipeline in less than 10 years.

“If it was knowingly operating in a fashion not allowed under the permit or if construction was done in a fashion that was not acceptable, that should cause the closure of the pipe for at least a period of time until those challenges are rectified,” said Gary Hanson, a member of the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission, told Reuters.

TransCanada said on Wednesday that it could take weeks to clean up the spill and bring the pipeline back online – news that sent shockwaves through the oil market. WTI spot prices surged on the news, pushing the benchmark back up above $58 per barrel.

TransCanada said that November deliveries through the pipeline would be cut by about 85 percent, a major outage for the nearly 600,000-bpd pipeline. Phillips 66, a major refiner that purchases crude from the pipeline, said that it is expecting an outage of about four weeks.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

TransCanada formally seeks NAFTA damages in Keystone XL rejection

June 26, 2016

TransCanada formally seeks NAFTA damages in Keystone XL rejection

Keystone XL was designed to link existing pipeline networks in Canada and the U.S.

(Evelyne Asselin/CBC)

TransCanada Corp. is formally requesting arbitration over U.S. President Barack Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline, seeking $15 billion US in damages, the company said in legal papers dated Friday.

TransCanada submitted a notice for an arbitration claim in January and had then tried to negotiate with the U.S. government to “reach an amicable settlement,” the company said in files posted on the pipeline’s website.

“Unfortunately, the parties were unable to settle the dispute.”

TransCanada said it then filed its formal arbitration request under North American Free Trade Agreement provisions, seeking to recover what it says are costs and damages.

The Keystone XL was designed to link existing pipeline networks in Canada and the United States to bring crude from Alberta and North Dakota to refineries in Illinois and, eventually, the Gulf of Mexico coast.

Obama rejected the cross-border crude oil pipeline last November, seven years after it was first proposed, saying it would not make a meaningful long-term contribution to the U.S. economy.

TransCanada is suing the United States in federal court in a separate legal action, seeking to reverse the pipeline’s rejection.

NAFTA, whose arbitration provisions allow companies to challenge governments before international panels, has been a target of recent anti-free-trade sentiments in the United States.

The heads of NAFTA members, Canada, the United States and Mexico, are expected to meet in Ottawa for a North American leaders’ Summit on June 29.

Canada was supposed to host the meeting early last year but cancelled it amid tension between then Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Obama over the Keystone XL pipeline.

TransCanada and the U.S. Department of Energy did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

 

Keystone XL may be dead. The oilsands probably aren’t

November 11, 2015

Keystone XL may be dead. The oilsands probably aren’t

Low petroleum prices mean new projects are on pause, but existing production won’t disappear

The oilsands are producing more than two million barrels per day from long-term projects that are very difficult to shut in. The transport network is like a game of whack-a-mole: One access point is knocked down, others pop up.

The oilsands are producing more than two million barrels per day from long-term projects that are very difficult to shut in. The transport network is like a game of whack-a-mole: One access point is knocked down, others pop up. (Jeff McIntosh/Canadian Press)

There is some soul searching going on in the oilpatch this week in the aftermath of the U.S. rejection of Keystone XL. Would a carbon tax have changed things? A gentler hand with the politics? How much of the U.S. decision was connected to increases in their own domestic production?

What they aren’t asking is how to get oilsands product to market. Because it’s getting there, in ways both obvious and unexpected. The oilsands have lots of problems, like low prices and high costs. But right now, market access is pretty far down the list.

Mississippi River Oil Spill

Oil is even being floated on barges down the Mississippi, though this barge was hit by a tow boat in September. (The Associated Press)

A slow boat down the Mississippi

“There is sufficient capacity to move all our production,” said Greg Stringham, vice-president of oilsands and markets with Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP). “There hasn’t been any production that has been shut in because of pipeline capacity.”

In the years since Keystone XL was first proposed in 2008, Canadian oil exports to the U.S. have increased by more than a million barrels a day. Rail has picked up some of that slack, maxing out at 165,000 barrels a day in 2014. It was around half that in the most recent quarter.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

FBI Invokes National Security to Justify Surveillance of Tar Sands Protestors

May 20, 2015

FBI Invokes National Security to Justify Surveillance of Tar Sands Protestors

The FBI has wide leeway to conduct surveillance on possible threats to “national security.” Where the rubber meets the road, of course, is who the Bureau decides constitutes such a threat.

Both the president and the Pentagon have proclaimed that global warming is a threat to U.S. national security. But there’s no sign that the FBI is wiretapping fossil fuel company CEOs.

On the contrary, in fact: as an FBI document published last week by the Guardian and Earth Island Journal demonstrates, the FBI has monitored members of Tar Sands Blockade, an organization trying to stop the Keystone XL Pipeline because its members believe it would mean “game over” due to climate change. Part of the FBI’s justification was that the “Keystone pipeline, as part of the oil and natural gas industry, is vital to the security and economy of the United States.”

According to the Guardian, FBI files show it conducted an investigation into Tar Sands Blockade members in which the Bureau “collated inside-knowledge about forthcoming protests, documented the identities of individuals photographing oil-related infrastructure, scrutinised police intelligence and cultivated at least one informant.”

The Guardian adds that “the documents connect the investigation into anti-Keystone activists to other ‘domestic terrorism issues’ in the agency and show there was some liaison with the local FBI ‘assistant weapons of mass destruction coordinator.’”

And that “the FBI files appear to suggest the Houston branch of the investigation was opened in early 2013, several months after a high-level strategy meeting between the agency and TransCanada, the company building the pipeline.”

Tar Sands Blockade members are attempting to stop the development of the Keystone pipeline, using non-violent tactics like locking themselves to pipeline equipment and climbing trees that must be cleared for construction.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
Click on image to read excerpts

Olduvai II: Exodus
Click on image to purchase

Click on image to purchase @ FriesenPress