What would be the reason for having the Keystone Tar Sands pipeline go through the US?

The benefits:

Increased profits for TransCanada

Increased profits for refiners

Between 2500 and 4650 temporary construction jobs lasting one to two years

A few hundred permanent jobs at best in America

The drawbacks:

Inevitable oil spills along the route

Increased cost of Canadian oil to Americans

Loss of jobs related to the increased cost of Canadian crude and oil spills

Piles of petroleum coke, a by product of refining of tar sands crude oil, piled up near the refineries

To those who claim the USA has all kinds of pipelines running through the country now, I would reply:

The oil to be transported through the XL Pipeline will be not your typical unprocessed crude oil. It will be a heavy, tar-like sludge called “bitumen”. For the bitumen to be moved through the pipes, TransCanada will have to dilute it with chemicals (that are particularly corrosive to steel) and then force the mixture through the pipes under high pressure. Worse, TransCanada views these chemicals as company trade secrets and refuses to make them public knowledge. When a spill occurs, and it is not ‘if’, it is ‘when’, the EPA’s crew will be facing the cleanup of unknown toxic compounds.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-symons/keysto...

The main reason is to move the oil from Canada to ports in the Southern part of the US for export. Some of it will go to American refineries though. What idiot told you it would only create 35 jobs?! It will create thousands. Not only is there a need for jobs to support the pipeline infrastructure, more oil to the ports demands more help to support that. There will also be more jobs with refineries to support the greater flow. This doesn't even take into consideration construction jobs, that will be created, that are actually "shovel ready". I thought Obama was all about shovel ready jobs.

Have you ever looked at a map of all the fossil fuel pipelines in the country? It looks like veins and arteries in a human body. It's a web that's EVERYWHERE! When is the last time some pipeline break made the news? One, two or more years ago. Now, compare this to how many train accidents involving oil cars there have been in the last 3-4 months alone, about 1 a month. Just over the border from New York in Canada, they had one of the biggest oil car disasters in history last year. Why don't the sources you listen to for your information tell you all this? The XL Pipeline is a win-win.

Besides, what's wrong with any new commerce? BTW, it's generally very inefficient to transport refined fossil products if one can help it. Refining happens near the terminals.

What would be the reason you prefer moving the oil by truck and train?

> To get orders of magnitude more spills?

> To have spills spread-out over untold miles?

> To get spills that are harder to contain and harder to clean-up?

> Or is it just because it makes super-rich Buffet super-richer?

It is coming through on trains now, which is much more dangerous.

It is refined on the Gulf Coast and sold from there. It is more than 35 jobs, and they are good paying jobs, too.

Canada can just sell it to China and they'll use it without refining it. Then we can share the filthy air that comes our way.

Oh that's called profit for the Kochs and a major risk for everyone else. It's the Kochs that own the refineries that would process the bitumen and they stand to make billions. They don't want anyone else building them.

Canada is trying to build pipelines to the east and west coasts, but the provinces that the oil would cross don't want it either.

Silly green person there are millions of miles of oil an gas pipelines an the bottom half of Keystone is being built.BHO will let it happen shafting all the green's in La,La Land.

lol " The risk of spills is great"

That makes one person who thinks that. So you think tanker cars via train is "safer" ?

Well you might want to tell the State Dept how wrong they are since they gave a green light on the whole thing lmao

Libs.. ya just make it up as you go along

More oil in the world mean lower prices for you and me! We have the refining capacity here and will get paid to refine it . So whats the downside ? And the risk of spills is not great ! You just spewed that out !

Is this what MSNBC told you? 35 jobs LOL. It goes to our refineries Einstein..BTW the risk of spills is negligible.

Because Warren Buffet"s trains keep derailing...Pipelines furnish good paying, safe, non union jobs. Who needs railroad employees who don't even have to pay Social Security taxes because they are "special Democrats"