The Globe and Mail reports, “With pipelines out of Canada effectively full, the oil patch faces mounting challenges to its core business. On Monday, RBC Dominion Securities Inc. warned that as much as a third of oil sands growth – 450,000 barrels a day – could be put on hold between 2015 and 2017 if the TransCanada Corp. Keystone XL pipeline is not approved by U.S. President Barack Obama.”
The Council of Canadians is encouraging its supporters to participate in the massive #ForwardOnClimate rally in Washington, DC this coming Sunday.
With increasing opposition to pipelines to the south (Keystone XL) and west (Northern Gateway), the imperative to move oil from Alberta is prompting new export plans. Today’s news article notes, “Chinese energy firms are also looking at ways to transport oil west. ‘They are also in discussion, I know, with railway companies,’ Ambassador to China Guy Saint-Jacques said on Monday. Nexen, which could soon be in Chinese hands, has studied the possibility of building an export terminal in British Columbia at the Port of Prince Rupert that would carry oil to the coast by rail.”
Other routes being considered:
- re-purposing an existing pipeline that runs from Zama City, Alberta to Norman Wells, Northwest Territories, then on the Canol pipeline from Whitehorse, Yukon to the port in Valdez, Alaska;
- either rail or pipeline from Alberta to the port in Churchill, Manitoba on Hudson Bay;
- a TransCanada west-to-east pipeline that would go to the deep water port in Saint John, New Brunswick on the Bay of Fundy;
- a Line 9 pipeline reversal to Montreal that could then be connected with an existing pipeline from Montreal to Portland, Maine (just 500 kilometres south of Saint John).
More at http://canadians.org/blog/?p=19244, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=19132, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=19257 and http://canadians.org/blog/?p=19134.
