Random Thought on CBR And The Keystone

Updates

Later, 7:56 pm: Wow, I am happy that "blogger" application time-stamps my posts. I can't make this stuff up. Just minutes after posting the note below, Don sends me this story. Reuters is reporting:

Using trains to move heavy crude oil out of Western Canada would be a poor alternative to the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, Canada's top energy official said on Wednesday, and a rail-only plan would likely dent future oil sands development.

U.S. officials are weighing whether to approve construction of the proposed Keystone pipeline that could deliver as much as 830,000 barrels a day of mostly Canadian and some U.S. crude oil to refiners in Texas and Louisiana.

Joe Oliver, Canada's natural resources minister, said costs and logistical challenges make crude-by-rail a poor second choice for oil sands producers trying to reach the U.S. Gulf Coast.

"Poor second choice." Give me a break. If the Keystone XL is killed, and the Canadian activists stop the pipeline through the Rocky Mountains, and French-Canadian activists stop an alternate pipeline to Montreal, rail becomes the ONLY choice. A poor choice it may be, but we're getting to the point where one needs to decide: Alberta bust or CBR?

Original Post

A reader suggested.

Pie in the sky? Possible?

Keystone XL: 850,000 bopd proposed.

Unit train: about 85,000 bbls/unit train

CBR: about 170,000 bopd loading capacity current max in North Dakota; typical, closer to 85,000 over one or two days, I suppose

A reader suggested. Don't laugh at me. But thinking out loud.

Would Warren Buffett/BNSF, Canadian Pacific, and TransCanada consider a mega-CBR facility on both sides of the US-Canadian border?

Canadian Pacific has the track. Right through the Bakken. And completely avoids Nebraska.

Ten unit trains daily across the border. A "ten 100-unit train shuttle." With all the money they would be making, they could make the train a subway. The North Sea Chunnel is 31 miles long; the Japanese Chunnel is almost 34 miles long.

The Berlin Airlift comes to mind.