"These boots are made for drilling" - Feigned support of Keystone pipeline by the U.S. pres will only fuel gas prices for the U.S. market.(
Ezra Levant).U.S. President Barack Obama posed in front of a stack of pipes this week, promising to cut through the red tape on the southern leg of the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Oklahoma to Texas.
Which is great. Except that the Oklahoma-to-Texas part of the pipeline was already approved. It had nothing to do with Obama —
he only has jurisdiction over the part of the pipeline that crosses the Canada-U.S. border. And he vetoed that part of the pipe last fall.
So it's like Obama has approved attaching one garden hose to another garden hose.
But he refuses to attach any of it to the faucet.
There is some utility to the lower leg of the pipeline — there is a bit of a bottleneck in Cushing, Okla., that this pipeline will address.But it's the line from Canada itself that's so important — that could add about 800,000 barrels of oil a day to the U.S. economy.
That oil won't make Americans drive any more. It would only replace current U.S. imports from Venezuela — the Keystone XL would go all the way down to the very same Texas refineries where Hugo Chavez sends his oil, coincidentally 800,000 barrels a day.
So it's a pretty straight swap of Canadian ethical oil for Venezuelan conflict oil. And Obama chose Hugo Chavez over us.
He made that choice last fall, and he's paying a political price for it now — gas prices in the U.S. are as high as $1.30 a litre, which is a shock in a country that is used to paying less than a buck a litre (they measure it by the gallon down there).
It's strange for Canadians to pay less for gas than Americans do. But then a lot of things have changed under Obama.
Our unemployment rate is 2% lower than theirs. Our corporate tax rate is 20% lower than theirs. Our credit rating is higher. We haven't had any banks fail.
It's like Opposite Day meets Groundhog Day. We're stronger than them, and getting stronger all the time.
Keystone XL has been studied for three years by the U.S. government. The Environmental Protection Agency gave it a thumbs up. The refineries want the oil. All the states involved want the pipeline. Transcanada, the pipeline company, agreed to reroute the pipe in a politically sensitive region of Nebraska. Both the Democrats and Republicans there gave it the thumbs up. But not Obama.
The problem is that he actually hates oil — even though he is the world's largest consumer of it, between his SUV motorcades and his Air Force One jets.
He believes in electric cars —
even though there is no market for $41,000 vehicles that only drive for an hour. He believes in solar panels — even though they're unworkable without massive subsidies.
His own secretary of energy, Steven Chu, told a Congressional hearing last week that the government's mission is not to lower gas costs — but to get Americans off gas altogether.
Hey, great idea — when we invent that fantasy fuel of the future. But until that happy day — until
dilithium crystals are invented — we're stuck with oil and all the wonderful things that come from it, ranging from gas for our ambulances and school buses, to petrochemicals for our iPhones.
You can't get off oil until you know what you're getting on to. And right now, there is no practical replacement.
Dreamy alternatives work for unserious people like science fiction moviemakers. James Cameron's movie Avatar talked about a resource called "Unobtainium."
Exactly — we haven't obtained it yet. The president of the United States needs to be a bit more grown up.
Blocking the Keystone XL pipeline isn't going to stop a single American car trip.
It will simply ensure that car is fueled by Hugo Chavez and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who must have been popping the champagne while laughing at Obama on TV.Read the full story
here.
