TPT July 2013

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Global Marketplace
July 2013 73
information provider Platts, gas mainline networks are set to
grow by 667 miles in the year – just over twice the 331 miles
completed and put into service in 2012.
“As we start to get a more robust economic recovery,
you could see more crucial bottlenecks occurring” on gas
pipelines, Michelle Michot Foss, director of the Center for
Energy Economics at the University of Texas (Austin), told
Platts (11 April). “That will definitely send a signal to the gas
side” to pick up the pace of expansions.
Each major project would include millions of dollars’ worth of
steel.
Oil and gas
A failure of Canada’s Keystone
XL pipeline project is portrayed
as potentially threatening to US
infrastructure
The decision by US President Barack Obama whether or
not to approve TransCanada Corporation’s contentious
Keystone XL pipeline proposal is expected to be announced
this summer. As the time grows shorter, the voices of both
opponents and backers of the $5.3bn project for transporting
Canadian oil to refineries in Texas grow stronger.
A steady drumbeat of opposition is being kept up by American
environmentalists, who assert that the pipeline would vastly
increase greenhouse gas emissions and the danger of oil
spills. In mid-April a new group, the All Risk, No Reward
Coalition, introduced a 30-second TV commercial calling
attention to the recent spill in Mayflower, Arkansas, of oil
sands crude from a decades-old pipeline. “It’s happened
before,” goes the message. “And now again.”
All Risk also noted that much of the oil that would travel
through the proposed pipeline would be refined at Gulf
Coast facilities and then exported. According to the TV
spot, “Keystone XL doesn’t go to the US. It goes through
the US.”
An indication of how much is at stake for Canada – suffering
a heavy-oil glut attributed largely to tight US pipeline capacity
– is evident from the new willingness of Canadians in high
places to push back at the environmentalists. In April, during
her fourth lobbying trip to Washington in 18 months, the
premier of Alberta – the Canadian province with the oil sands
formations that would supply Keystone XL – said opponents
of the 1,700-mile pipeline were “far from reality” about its
environmental costs.
The claim by Premier Alison Redford that developing the oil
sands would have a negligible impact on global warming is
disputed by opponents of the project, who say the high carbon
content of the crude has the potential to disrupt climate. While
acknowledging that pipeline spills occur, Ms Redford said
the proposed 36" diameter pipeline would be safer and more
technologically advanced than existing pipelines.
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