Hardball: Keystone XL At Risk of Being Lost; If Lost, TransCanada to Shut Down Cushing MarketLink Which Carries 150,000 Bbls From Cushing to Gulf Coast Refineries

Link here.

Continued regulatory delays could place the proposed 700,000-b/d Keystone XL pipeline in jeopardy, according to Robert Jones, TransCanada vice-president and manager of the Keystone Pipeline project, while speaking to reporters July 20 on the sidelines of the Oil Sands & Heavy Oil Technologies conference in Calgary. “US refiners will have to replace the oil they’re losing from Mexico and Venezuela and they will do that by whatever means they can,” he said. [Whatever that means.]

Jones also noted that TransCanada’s Keystone Cushing MarketLink project, delivering 150,000 b/d of crude from Cushing to the US Gulf Coast by 2013, would not proceed without approval of Keystone XL, explaining that the economics do not work for the line as a stand-alone facility.

During his keynote presentation on Keystone XL, Jones described the pipeline as a target for environmental groups who simply oppose oil, noting that building the facilities to export the crude overseas instead, conducting those export activities, and then importing crude by truck, rail, or tanker onto the Gulf Coast would have environmental impacts, including greenhouse gas emissions, exceeding those of building and operating Keystone XL.

After reading about the properties of Canadian oil to be shipped through Keystone XL and the new, increased reserve numbers from Venezuela, the loss of Keystone XL may not be all that important to the US.

Canada will probably ship Canadian sands oil to west coast to China.