President Barack Obama "welcomes" TransCanada's decision to build a pipeline to bring crude oil from Cushing, Oklahoma, to the Gulf of Mexico. "As the President made clear in January, we support the company's interest in proceeding with this project, which will help address the bottleneck of oil in Cushing that has resulted in large part from increased domestic oil production, currently at an eight year high. Moving oil from the Midwest to the world-class, state-of-the-art refineries on the Gulf Coast will modernize our infrastructure, create jobs, and encourage American energy production," the White House said in a statement.Wow, just think: this pipeline will modernize our infrastructure, create jobs, and encourage American energy production. Wow. Just think what Keystone XL would have done.
Note: this is just the pipeline from Cushing, OK, to the Gulf.
One has to ask why TransCanada didn't do this all along. Once the Canadian-Montana leg is approved after the election, the next fight will be in Texas. My understanding is that the Texas ranches, the Sierra Club and other faux-environmentalists will do what they can to stop the pipeline going through Texas. I believe the proposed pipeline runs perilously close to the Edwards Aquifer underlying the second-largest city in Texas, San Antonio. TransCanada is smart to get this southern route completed.
