If consumers were asked by a psychologist, or maybe more appropriately, a psychiatrist whether their glasses were half full or half empty, the response may be “who cares about a theoretical glass?”
Your question should be, “are the pipelines half full or half empty?”
When it came to the cyberattack and ransomed Colonial then it was more than half empty. It was shut down. Now it’s in restart mode. Only took a week to solve that problem.
As for Line 5, this has been under a different attack for six months now, all based, essentially on the political aspirations of the governor of Michigan.
The deadline for closure of this Line was today – May 13, 2021 – but it’s still open. How long for? Who knows? Enbridge is in court trying to stop the closure.
It pains me to draw your attention to the divergent approaches the governments of the U.S. and Canada have taken to come to a resolution to both pipeline problems.
In the U.S., President Biden realized that with the Colonial shut down, gasoline supply was cut off and prices were sure to reach levels not seen since the line went down due to Hurricane Katrina. He understood that high gasoline prices affect the middle class who have been inundated with the hardships of the pandemic.
What did he do? He acted. He suspended the Jones Act, which declared that refined products can only move by sea between states if the ship is American owned, operated, and crewed by Americans.
By doing this he freed up foreign tankers to supply gasoline and diesel to ports along the eastern seaboard. Next, President Biden expanded the hours of operation that trucks could operate to supply service stations. Then he allowed refiners to produce higher emission prone gasoline, which is easier and less expensive to refine.
These were proactive measures that worked to calm the growing consumer concerns.
Moving north of the border the attitude on Line 5 has been the opposite of any sort of action.
Let me call it “Naption.”
The only action that could been seen as an attempt to alleviate the problem has been the formation of committees with our Minister of Natural Resources appearing last minute on national TV saying that the federal and provincial governments were “all hands-on deck,” and that closure of Line 5 is “not negotiable.”
May I suggest that if Michigan shuts Line 5 down then there is little if anything that Canada can do about it and that this ship will sink with all political hands on board.
Ironically, this has been a great week for the pipeline industry and a bad one for environmentally accented politicos. It has clearly illustrated to the voting fossil fuel consumers that pipelines are the workhorses that pull the economy forward.
As Clint Eastwood once famously growled: “apologize to my mule.”
– Roger McKnight – B.Sc., Senior Petroleum Analyst
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