Why is it late?
Was there an accident?
Did the bus driver get lost?
Out of frustration, the Canadian oil industry went out into the street to see if the Keystone XL express was on its way because Alberta was late getting its workers to work.
Then BAM!
The bus wasn’t late — Alberta and the Canadian economy just got run over by it.
The first priority for freshly inaugurated President Joe Biden was to rename the Keystone XL as the Keystoned Axed L. After 11 years, this project is officially dead on non-arrival and will never be resuscitated.
Pipelines and fossil fuels are not on the dancing card of this new administration; something that is now maybe not so painfully obvious to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. His reaction to the cancellation was, “Oh Heck! I tried!” Hey Joe! What about our carbon taxes, pretty neat huh?”
I will not spend time or keystrokes arguing a case for the ExL. I will, however, pose some questions and issue more dark cloud forecasts for the Canadian economy.
If the Axed L was so bad and Alberta crude is so evil then why stop there? Why doesn’t the U.S. dig up the existing 3,460 km Keystone line that carries 590,000 bpd of this same crude from Alberta ultimately to the U.S. Gulf coast family of refineries?
Why stop there? Let’s keep this momentum going.
In 2019, three pipelines were completed to move crude from western Texas to the Gulf at three times the volume of the KXL. But that’s just the tip of the potential pipeberg. The U.S. is crisscrossed by approximately three million miles of pipelines — a number that isn’t up for discussion.
But try to add 1,500 miles of KXL and that’s a different story that needs discussion today.
If, in fact, the new administration has an aversion to fossil fuels and pipelines in general, then I must repeat my warning of the storm on the horizon being the potential shut down of Enbridge Line 5. Things just got more ominous with the Biden appointment of the former Governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm as the new Energy Secretary who may back the position of the current state Governor (another Democrat) who wants Line 5 closed by May of this year.
The closure of Line 5 would cut off 40% of crude and refined product supply to Ontario and Quebec. If our PM was carefree in dropping the ball on the XL, then he is holding a live hand grenade on his lap with Line 5.
Be careful with that pin Mr. Trudeau, it’s not a balloon you are playing with.
– Roger McKnight – B.Sc., Senior Petroleum Analyst
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