6 ms·

Is It Time to Revisit the Keystone XL Pipeline?

28 points by RickJWagner 5y ago

noworld 5y ago
yep
mzmzmzm 5y ago
If it already existed sure, but couldn't you add some wind or solar capacity to offset other energy uses in the time it would take to get a project of this scale going? When you choose the low carbon option you get the benefit of being insulated from oil and gas market shocks.
dale_glass 5y ago
I'm not sure I trust such suggestions when they come from "Oil and Energy news". In other news, a publication focused on the nuclear industry thinks we need a lot more nuclear, and a publication focused on renewables thinks we need more solar and wind.
- jtbayly 5y ago
  I understand the sentiment, but then... I'm left wondering who do we ask to answer this question? A random reporter who writes listicles?
- formerkrogeremp 5y ago
  I'd trust each subject matter expert to report their 'beat' more accurately than some random author. Of course, 'it is ever the province of specialists to overstate their domain.' This nihilist argument that all journalists are generating nothing but fake news and lying is disingenuous in general. I understand healthy scepticism but dismissal of all news isn't a good idea. Being aware of biases is good, yes, but outright nihilism, no.
Throwawayaerlei 5y ago
What could possibly convince TC Energy or any other entity to trust that the US wouldn't cancel it again? There's a reason that company has given up on it.
lesgobrandon 5y ago
causi 5y ago
From a purely selfish American standpoint, I'm not enthusiastic about damaging the environment in the United States so that Canadian oil companies can sell it to Europeans.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  From a purely selfish European standpoint I'm not enthusiastic about that either!
- roter 5y ago
  As a Canadian, I can't agree more.
- incomingpain 5y ago
  >From a purely selfish American standpoint, I'm not enthusiastic about damaging the environment in the United States so that Canadian oil companies can sell it to Europeans. Keystone XL goes south to Steele City. Helping also move Baker, MT oil. Not really a total Canadian thing. Keystone XL has nothing at all to do with Europe.
  - actionfromafar 5y ago
    I assumed the underlying idea was that the US will export oil to make up for Russian oil about to be sanctioned in Europe.
    - incomingpain 5y ago
      >I assumed the underlying idea was that the US will export oil to make up for Russian oil about to be sanctioned in Europe. With XL being cancelled. Canadian oil can still get to Port Arthur for export; but would not have the capacity to still serve the US market. In terms of Canadians helping Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_East https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_East This is the pipeline that would have been helping Europe but that got cancelled. Huge failure on our government's part for doing this. As a hail mary they approved: https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/n-l-bay-du-nord-oil-project-highlights-tension-between-economy-climate-goals-1.5850790 https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/n-l-bay-du-nord-oil-project-high... Deep water well isn't going to be getting built tomorrow. Even if they magic the best resources every and rush this... I would expect it's minimum 5 years out? Europe can wait 5 years without oil right? Really our only option will be oil trains but those crash and burn far too often and probably wont be allowed. So basically... Canada's promise that we are going to be there to help Europe is a lie.
xadhominemx 5y ago
I don’t think it would have much of an impact. There are a lot of untapped wells with much lower breakeven cost in west Texas that aren’t being exploited because the North American industry has become much more supply disciplined. Bringing more capacity online won’t increase output unless the export markets become much better developed, which will take massive refinery and terminal investments on both sides of the Atlantic.
- someelephant 5y ago
  There is plenty of refining and export capacity in Texas. It would have an enormous impact on investment in oil production and therefore future oil prices in North America. Pipelines are much cheaper and safer than rail and would lower the cost of production and therefore the cost of the final product.
  - xadhominemx 5y ago
    Is your argument that the pipeline would reduce cost of the oil sands? Because yes, it would. But that would lead to even more US wells shutting off at these price levels. I was talking specifically about natgas terminals and processing.
  - tzs 5y ago
    > Pipelines are much cheaper and safer than rail and would lower the cost of production and therefore the cost of the final product. Would it? Oil is a commodity with a huge market. Isn't that oil going to fetch the same price no matter how it actually gets to the market? Lowering production costs for any given small producer should simply mean more profit for them rather than lower prices for buyers of the commodity.
- Arubis 5y ago
  But it’d make some guys richer! I’ll bet they’d like that.
  - exabrial 5y ago
    how is that relevent?
rascul 5y ago
> The Keystone XL pipeline extension was proposed by TC Energy in 2008 to transport 830,000 bpd of Alberta tar sands oil to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Is this oil currently being transported by truck or is it sitting in the ground waiting for a pipeline? Or something else?
- exabrial 5y ago
  The stuff that is obtained, usually rail, which is hilariously awful accident record. Pipelines are designed with remediation in mind. Tracks were put down by tycoons 100 years ago.
  - jcranmer 5y ago
    I think you are seriously underestimating just how frequently pipelines fail. There are definitely more pipeline spills than rail accidents each year, and I believe if you take into account severity of spills (e.g., ignoring spills that don't make it outside a pumping station), I think it comes out to "pipelines spill on average as much in a year as rail has in my entire lifetime."
  - yabones 5y ago
    Isn't it cheaper/safer to build railroads that can transport anything rather than a pipeline that only does oil? If the problem is the quality of the aging railways, why don't we just fix that?
    - exabrial 5y ago
      Great question. That can and has been done. The problem is it's enormously expensive as you're dealing with competing optimizations. Railroads can't go "anywhere", generally you need very shallow grades and the right structure underneath the tracks. Unfortunately the soil, rock layers, fault lines (think small fractures that water travels along, not san andres), drainage patterns, and many more factors contribute to environmental safety beneath said lines. So your rail would likely not be able to take the most efficient or straight path for rail. This isn't a problem for something like the XL pipeline, which had sealed clay basins planned in worrysome areas. Train wrecks are also catastrophic, so while catch basins work pretty dang well, they can damaged easily in events like that. So you end up having to make compromises somewhere: efficient trains vs environmental safety. Pipelines have similar issues, but they're not dealing with thundering transient loads, and modern pipelines are very safe compared to their 50 year old counterparts, in the same way US nuclear reactors are far safer than RMBK reactors. Tracks that can "haul anything" certain could be built, but at a larger cost than general freight rail.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
exabrial 5y ago
The first step to a carbon free future is energy independence. You walk before you run a marathon. Why is this? If an external supplier sees you building an alternative to get off their product, they will sabotage your efforts by artificially dropping their prices below cost, tanking your efforts. This happens repeatedly with OPEC and we keep falling for it. I think this is an opportunity for blue + red to agree on the outcome, but for slightly different conclusions. Until we can work past cutting off your nose to protect personal identity politics, we are unlikely to see any measurable progress.
- erdos4d 5y ago
  > Until we can work past cutting off your nose to protect personal identity politics, we are unlikely to see any measurable progress. I agree. Hypothetically speaking, are there any betting markets that would allow a person to "short" this issue? I think we all know this will never happen.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  Energy independence doesn't mean immunity to global commodity prices. As long as we use and sell oil, we will see energy price impacts from external suppliers manipulating the price.
- throwaway2016a 5y ago
  > If an external supplier sees you building an alternative to get off their product, they will sabotage your efforts by artificially dropping their prices below cost, tanking your efforts. US owned / domestic oil companies can still do this. I don't see what independence gets us here. Unless we go the communist route and nationalize oil production, which clearly will never happen in the US.
Findecanor 5y ago
I thought it had been cancelled for good reasons.
temp8964 5y ago
One of the reasons we got in this geopolitical sh*tstorm is that the western countries have a naive view and lots of wishful thinkings on authoritarian regimes. I think it's OK for environmentalists to not think about geopolitics and to imagine they live in a world peace utopian, but the leaders of the major western countries should not fall in this trap. Energy independence and manufacturing independence of essential goods of the free world is crucial not only to the free world, but to the whole humanity. Authoritarian China is coming to be another superpower, but I am not sure the free world is ready for the challenge.
- Ourgon 5y ago
  The "Free World" has become markedly less free since the fall of the Berlin wall. Part of this is just the result of the fact that was deemed no longer necessary by those in power to portray the image of being "The Free World" now that the cold war was over, part of it is due to the fact that the enemy-shaped hole left by the demise of the Evil Empire was filled by things like "globalism" and "climate disaster". Globalism created the conditions for the rise of China as the up-and-coming superpower, the climate scare created the conditions for the WEF "Build Back Better" [1] strategy which is to usher in that globalist world where "you will own nothing and you will be happy" [2]. Then the SARS2 pandemic hit - oddly enough just a few months after the WEF finished practising for just such a scenario in their "Event 201" program [3] - which severely restricted freedom all over the world, markedly so in states which were deemed to be the poster children of "The Free World". Many leaders started using the rhetoric of "The Great Reset" and "Build Back Better" [4], some leaders of "The Free World" openly proclaimed their admiration of the Chinese approach [5], many others were inspired by the Chinese "social credit score" system and forwarded plans to create similar systems in "The Free World" under the guise of "Pandemic preparedness". Many if not most of those schemes ended up being shot down in the parliamentary process but is has been made clear that the freedoms which were once seen as inviolable in "The Free World" - from ownership rights through freedom of speech to freedom of association and freedom of movement - are seen as a detriment to their ideas of how society is to progress by a number of influential people. [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/07/to-build-back-better-we-must-reinvent-capitalism-heres-how https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/07/to-build-back-better-... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/shopping-i-cant-really-remember-what-that-is-or-how-differently-well-live-in-2030/?sh=6d2cda2d1735 https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s... [2] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/8-predictions-for-the-world-in-2030/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/8-predictions-for-the... - notice that the WEF removed the page related to this quote: '1. All products will have become services.' leads to 'Sorry, but we can’t find the page you were looking for' while other links still work [3] https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/ https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/ [4] https://yewtu.be/watch?v=YkcaeaD45MY https://yewtu.be/watch?v=YkcaeaD45MY [5] https://yewtu.be/watch?v=eqnmfNiaM-Y https://yewtu.be/watch?v=eqnmfNiaM-Y
rglullis 5y ago
No. This is mostly a PR submarine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJOuyckvDGY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJOuyckvDGY
jillesvangurp 5y ago
I don't think there's an actual shortage of production capacity; just a short term misalignment with some countries having agreed earlier to produce less so prices could go up. Oil companies in the US in particular seem sensitive to low prices as their cost is high. E.g. a lot of fracking activity stops being profitable around a 30-40$ oil price. Current prices are of course great for such companies and they probably will end up having a great year. But lets not get carried away, these might just be short term effects and once the Saudi's and whomever else picks up the slack, prices might drop just as rapidly as they've risen. Also, the Russians might re-appear on the market if they manage to come to some diplomatic resolution. Either way, the current shortage might only be temporary and could easily turn into a surplus. And of course a long term effect of the current high prices is an acceleration of the move to renewable energy. If you are still burning oil or gas, you are at the mercy of market prices. And that looks to be like an expensive thing right now. The long term effect of people needing less oil and gas is fierce competition among oil and gas producers for a shrinking market. So, adding more production is not really necessary if demand starts dropping instead of increasing (which it has historically done). That might be sooner rather than later. EV production is currently millions of vehicles per year and will soon hit tens of millions of vehicles per year and eventually ICE vehicle production is going to be less than half of the market a few years later. That's a lot of petrol and diesel that won't be needed any more.
- chii 5y ago
  > If you are still burning oil or gas, you are at the mercy of market prices. industrial uses of oil and gas, not just as an energy source, but as feedstock, is not easily abated with renewables. I think that residential and may be some commercial heating with gas could be replaced in the short and medium term with electricity, which then makes renewables possible for these use cases. But a factory making steel beams or something would require gas heating because it is built into their production process, and changing that over would basically mean re-designing and re-engineering the factory! I dont think that can be done in the short to medium term at all, even if they start planning today. There's still a good half-century of life left in oil and gas imho, and that's not including the emerging economies' needs in the future as they develop.
mrfusion 5y ago
Why not a compromise and build a continental bike trail and parkland along the entire pipeline?
gossamer 5y ago
No. Just no.
foolzcrow 5y ago
throwaway2016a 5y ago
I think some people in the comments didn't read the article. The article concludes that solving supply shortage issues would be faster and more efficient by re-opening currently offline oil wells domestically and finishing existing projects (that aren't XL). Nevermind, what the article doesn't mention, that a lot of the shortage is due to the OPEC+ deal that happened to stop the prices from plummeting and is already in the process of being unwound (on schedule... despite some wanting to unwind it quicker).
clankyclanker 5y ago
Also see yesterday's related post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30919163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30919163 IPCC report: The evidence is clear: the time for action is now > Limiting global warming will require major transitions in the energy sector. This will involve a substantial reduction in fossil fuel use, widespread electrification, improved energy efficiency, and use of alternative fuels (such as hydrogen). > "Having the right policies, infrastructure and technology in place to enable changes to our lifestyles and behaviour can result in a 40-70% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050."
breadbreadbread 5y ago
gas being expensive doesnt make destroying indigenous lands ok???? this is incredibly disrespectful to anyone who fought for the environment and for indigenous sovereignty

28 points by RickJWagner 5y ago

yep

If it already existed sure, but couldn't you add some wind or solar capacity to offset other energy uses in the time it would take to get a project of this scale going? When you choose the low carbon option you get the benefit of being insulated from oil and gas market shocks.

dale_glass 5y ago

I'm not sure I trust such suggestions when they come from "Oil and Energy news". In other news, a publication focused on the nuclear industry thinks we need a lot more nuclear, and a publication focused on renewables thinks we need more solar and wind.

jtbayly 5y ago
I understand the sentiment, but then... I'm left wondering who do we ask to answer this question? A random reporter who writes listicles?
formerkrogeremp 5y ago
I'd trust each subject matter expert to report their 'beat' more accurately than some random author. Of course, 'it is ever the province of specialists to overstate their domain.' This nihilist argument that all journalists are generating nothing but fake news and lying is disingenuous in general. I understand healthy scepticism but dismissal of all news isn't a good idea. Being aware of biases is good, yes, but outright nihilism, no.

Throwawayaerlei 5y ago

What could possibly convince TC Energy or any other entity to trust that the US wouldn't cancel it again? There's a reason that company has given up on it.

lesgobrandon 5y ago

causi 5y ago

From a purely selfish American standpoint, I'm not enthusiastic about damaging the environment in the United States so that Canadian oil companies can sell it to Europeans.

nicoburns 5y ago
From a purely selfish European standpoint I'm not enthusiastic about that either!
roter 5y ago
As a Canadian, I can't agree more.
incomingpain 5y ago
>From a purely selfish American standpoint, I'm not enthusiastic about damaging the environment in the United States so that Canadian oil companies can sell it to Europeans. Keystone XL goes south to Steele City. Helping also move Baker, MT oil. Not really a total Canadian thing. Keystone XL has nothing at all to do with Europe.
- actionfromafar 5y ago
  I assumed the underlying idea was that the US will export oil to make up for Russian oil about to be sanctioned in Europe.
  - incomingpain 5y ago
    >I assumed the underlying idea was that the US will export oil to make up for Russian oil about to be sanctioned in Europe. With XL being cancelled. Canadian oil can still get to Port Arthur for export; but would not have the capacity to still serve the US market. In terms of Canadians helping Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_East https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_East This is the pipeline that would have been helping Europe but that got cancelled. Huge failure on our government's part for doing this. As a hail mary they approved: https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/n-l-bay-du-nord-oil-project-highlights-tension-between-economy-climate-goals-1.5850790 https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/n-l-bay-du-nord-oil-project-high... Deep water well isn't going to be getting built tomorrow. Even if they magic the best resources every and rush this... I would expect it's minimum 5 years out? Europe can wait 5 years without oil right? Really our only option will be oil trains but those crash and burn far too often and probably wont be allowed. So basically... Canada's promise that we are going to be there to help Europe is a lie.

xadhominemx 5y ago

I don’t think it would have much of an impact. There are a lot of untapped wells with much lower breakeven cost in west Texas that aren’t being exploited because the North American industry has become much more supply disciplined. Bringing more capacity online won’t increase output unless the export markets become much better developed, which will take massive refinery and terminal investments on both sides of the Atlantic.

someelephant 5y ago
There is plenty of refining and export capacity in Texas. It would have an enormous impact on investment in oil production and therefore future oil prices in North America. Pipelines are much cheaper and safer than rail and would lower the cost of production and therefore the cost of the final product.
- xadhominemx 5y ago
  Is your argument that the pipeline would reduce cost of the oil sands? Because yes, it would. But that would lead to even more US wells shutting off at these price levels. I was talking specifically about natgas terminals and processing.
- tzs 5y ago
  > Pipelines are much cheaper and safer than rail and would lower the cost of production and therefore the cost of the final product. Would it? Oil is a commodity with a huge market. Isn't that oil going to fetch the same price no matter how it actually gets to the market? Lowering production costs for any given small producer should simply mean more profit for them rather than lower prices for buyers of the commodity.
Arubis 5y ago
But it’d make some guys richer! I’ll bet they’d like that.
- exabrial 5y ago
  how is that relevent?

rascul 5y ago

> The Keystone XL pipeline extension was proposed by TC Energy in 2008 to transport 830,000 bpd of Alberta tar sands oil to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Is this oil currently being transported by truck or is it sitting in the ground waiting for a pipeline? Or something else?

exabrial 5y ago
The stuff that is obtained, usually rail, which is hilariously awful accident record. Pipelines are designed with remediation in mind. Tracks were put down by tycoons 100 years ago.
- jcranmer 5y ago
  I think you are seriously underestimating just how frequently pipelines fail. There are definitely more pipeline spills than rail accidents each year, and I believe if you take into account severity of spills (e.g., ignoring spills that don't make it outside a pumping station), I think it comes out to "pipelines spill on average as much in a year as rail has in my entire lifetime."
- yabones 5y ago
  Isn't it cheaper/safer to build railroads that can transport anything rather than a pipeline that only does oil? If the problem is the quality of the aging railways, why don't we just fix that?
  - exabrial 5y ago
    Great question. That can and has been done. The problem is it's enormously expensive as you're dealing with competing optimizations. Railroads can't go "anywhere", generally you need very shallow grades and the right structure underneath the tracks. Unfortunately the soil, rock layers, fault lines (think small fractures that water travels along, not san andres), drainage patterns, and many more factors contribute to environmental safety beneath said lines. So your rail would likely not be able to take the most efficient or straight path for rail. This isn't a problem for something like the XL pipeline, which had sealed clay basins planned in worrysome areas. Train wrecks are also catastrophic, so while catch basins work pretty dang well, they can damaged easily in events like that. So you end up having to make compromises somewhere: efficient trains vs environmental safety. Pipelines have similar issues, but they're not dealing with thundering transient loads, and modern pipelines are very safe compared to their 50 year old counterparts, in the same way US nuclear reactors are far safer than RMBK reactors. Tracks that can "haul anything" certain could be built, but at a larger cost than general freight rail.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

exabrial 5y ago

The first step to a carbon free future is energy independence. You walk before you run a marathon. Why is this? If an external supplier sees you building an alternative to get off their product, they will sabotage your efforts by artificially dropping their prices below cost, tanking your efforts. This happens repeatedly with OPEC and we keep falling for it. I think this is an opportunity for blue + red to agree on the outcome, but for slightly different conclusions. Until we can work past cutting off your nose to protect personal identity politics, we are unlikely to see any measurable progress.

erdos4d 5y ago
> Until we can work past cutting off your nose to protect personal identity politics, we are unlikely to see any measurable progress. I agree. Hypothetically speaking, are there any betting markets that would allow a person to "short" this issue? I think we all know this will never happen.
shkkmo 5y ago
Energy independence doesn't mean immunity to global commodity prices. As long as we use and sell oil, we will see energy price impacts from external suppliers manipulating the price.
throwaway2016a 5y ago
> If an external supplier sees you building an alternative to get off their product, they will sabotage your efforts by artificially dropping their prices below cost, tanking your efforts. US owned / domestic oil companies can still do this. I don't see what independence gets us here. Unless we go the communist route and nationalize oil production, which clearly will never happen in the US.

Findecanor 5y ago

I thought it had been cancelled for good reasons.

temp8964 5y ago

One of the reasons we got in this geopolitical sh*tstorm is that the western countries have a naive view and lots of wishful thinkings on authoritarian regimes. I think it's OK for environmentalists to not think about geopolitics and to imagine they live in a world peace utopian, but the leaders of the major western countries should not fall in this trap. Energy independence and manufacturing independence of essential goods of the free world is crucial not only to the free world, but to the whole humanity. Authoritarian China is coming to be another superpower, but I am not sure the free world is ready for the challenge.

Ourgon 5y ago
The "Free World" has become markedly less free since the fall of the Berlin wall. Part of this is just the result of the fact that was deemed no longer necessary by those in power to portray the image of being "The Free World" now that the cold war was over, part of it is due to the fact that the enemy-shaped hole left by the demise of the Evil Empire was filled by things like "globalism" and "climate disaster". Globalism created the conditions for the rise of China as the up-and-coming superpower, the climate scare created the conditions for the WEF "Build Back Better" [1] strategy which is to usher in that globalist world where "you will own nothing and you will be happy" [2]. Then the SARS2 pandemic hit - oddly enough just a few months after the WEF finished practising for just such a scenario in their "Event 201" program [3] - which severely restricted freedom all over the world, markedly so in states which were deemed to be the poster children of "The Free World". Many leaders started using the rhetoric of "The Great Reset" and "Build Back Better" [4], some leaders of "The Free World" openly proclaimed their admiration of the Chinese approach [5], many others were inspired by the Chinese "social credit score" system and forwarded plans to create similar systems in "The Free World" under the guise of "Pandemic preparedness". Many if not most of those schemes ended up being shot down in the parliamentary process but is has been made clear that the freedoms which were once seen as inviolable in "The Free World" - from ownership rights through freedom of speech to freedom of association and freedom of movement - are seen as a detriment to their ideas of how society is to progress by a number of influential people. [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/07/to-build-back-better-we-must-reinvent-capitalism-heres-how https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/07/to-build-back-better-... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/shopping-i-cant-really-remember-what-that-is-or-how-differently-well-live-in-2030/?sh=6d2cda2d1735 https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s... [2] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/8-predictions-for-the-world-in-2030/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/8-predictions-for-the... - notice that the WEF removed the page related to this quote: '1. All products will have become services.' leads to 'Sorry, but we can’t find the page you were looking for' while other links still work [3] https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/ https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/ [4] https://yewtu.be/watch?v=YkcaeaD45MY https://yewtu.be/watch?v=YkcaeaD45MY [5] https://yewtu.be/watch?v=eqnmfNiaM-Y https://yewtu.be/watch?v=eqnmfNiaM-Y

rglullis 5y ago

No. This is mostly a PR submarine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJOuyckvDGY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJOuyckvDGY

jillesvangurp 5y ago

I don't think there's an actual shortage of production capacity; just a short term misalignment with some countries having agreed earlier to produce less so prices could go up. Oil companies in the US in particular seem sensitive to low prices as their cost is high. E.g. a lot of fracking activity stops being profitable around a 30-40$ oil price. Current prices are of course great for such companies and they probably will end up having a great year. But lets not get carried away, these might just be short term effects and once the Saudi's and whomever else picks up the slack, prices might drop just as rapidly as they've risen. Also, the Russians might re-appear on the market if they manage to come to some diplomatic resolution. Either way, the current shortage might only be temporary and could easily turn into a surplus. And of course a long term effect of the current high prices is an acceleration of the move to renewable energy. If you are still burning oil or gas, you are at the mercy of market prices. And that looks to be like an expensive thing right now. The long term effect of people needing less oil and gas is fierce competition among oil and gas producers for a shrinking market. So, adding more production is not really necessary if demand starts dropping instead of increasing (which it has historically done). That might be sooner rather than later. EV production is currently millions of vehicles per year and will soon hit tens of millions of vehicles per year and eventually ICE vehicle production is going to be less than half of the market a few years later. That's a lot of petrol and diesel that won't be needed any more.

chii 5y ago
> If you are still burning oil or gas, you are at the mercy of market prices. industrial uses of oil and gas, not just as an energy source, but as feedstock, is not easily abated with renewables. I think that residential and may be some commercial heating with gas could be replaced in the short and medium term with electricity, which then makes renewables possible for these use cases. But a factory making steel beams or something would require gas heating because it is built into their production process, and changing that over would basically mean re-designing and re-engineering the factory! I dont think that can be done in the short to medium term at all, even if they start planning today. There's still a good half-century of life left in oil and gas imho, and that's not including the emerging economies' needs in the future as they develop.

mrfusion 5y ago

Why not a compromise and build a continental bike trail and parkland along the entire pipeline?

gossamer 5y ago

No. Just no.

foolzcrow 5y ago

throwaway2016a 5y ago

I think some people in the comments didn't read the article. The article concludes that solving supply shortage issues would be faster and more efficient by re-opening currently offline oil wells domestically and finishing existing projects (that aren't XL). Nevermind, what the article doesn't mention, that a lot of the shortage is due to the OPEC+ deal that happened to stop the prices from plummeting and is already in the process of being unwound (on schedule... despite some wanting to unwind it quicker).

clankyclanker 5y ago

Also see yesterday's related post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30919163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30919163 IPCC report: The evidence is clear: the time for action is now > Limiting global warming will require major transitions in the energy sector. This will involve a substantial reduction in fossil fuel use, widespread electrification, improved energy efficiency, and use of alternative fuels (such as hydrogen). > "Having the right policies, infrastructure and technology in place to enable changes to our lifestyles and behaviour can result in a 40-70% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050."

breadbreadbread 5y ago

gas being expensive doesnt make destroying indigenous lands ok???? this is incredibly disrespectful to anyone who fought for the environment and for indigenous sovereignty