Wow, He Really Stepped In It This Time -- Keystone Debacle

This has been a most fascinating day.

Here's the timeline:

6:00 a.m. Market not open; Squawk box CNN; Boone Pickens guest; oil showing red

7:00 a.m. "Red" for oil starting to attenuate; turns green just before I head out the door

8:59 a.m. E-mail to Don, asking for thoughts on jump in oil price; only up a dollar or so

10:05 a.m. His reply -- Mideast tension

10:20 a.m. My answer -- Mideast tension has been there for days; not new; something else going on; can't explain it

10:21 a.m. Don e-mails article on Enbridge reversing pipeline flow; easing Cushing bottleneck; that's the reason; blogosphere not talking about it yet; mainstream media starting to talk about it (Don hit the nail on the head with this one!)

3:30 p.m. Widely disseminated -- mainstream media, blogs, columnists -- Enbridge reversing the flow takes pressure off Cushing. Brent fell slightly today; spread between Cushing (WTI) and Brent lessens; price of WTI up significantly considering it had already trended toward $100, and especially considering that most pundits expected a temporary pullback

4:00 p.m. First time all day I've had opportunity to check in on Drudge: headline story: "Oil Spikes" with picture of the president; upper left headline: "Obama nixed pipeline aimed at boosting US supplies..."

By tomorrow this will have all sunk in. The dots will have been connected. MSNBC's "Morning Joe" will avoid the 800-lb gorilla sitting in the living room ($100 oil) or will have their own spin; FOX will be all over it. If oil continues to rise (I don't think it will; I think there will be profit taking, or sanity will replace euphoria, and oil will settle back around $100), there will be a lot of hand-wringing over all that Canadian oil that is now going to be sold to China. Of course, it won't all be sold to China; there are still huge pipelines from Canada to the US, but it will make for interesting theater.

But, at least for the moment, it certainly appears he really stepped into it this time. Right, wrong, or indifferent, the timing of this oil spike is being picked up by Drudge. It will be interesting to see if the story has legs. It will, if ...

*******************

Forbes columnist calls it a colossal mistake (killing the Keystone XL)

Canada's premier says China will be the dominant player in the 21st century and says Canada should look to China rather than to the US for its economic well-being. Wow.