Keystone XL was about transporting Canadian tar sands to Louisiana for processing and shipment overseas.
First part is correct. It is moving Canadian super-heavy oil to Gulf Coast refineries equipped to process it. The second part is nonsense. There is more than enough demand in the US for this oil and the Colonial Pipeline that originates with those refineries and supplies the Southeastern US and up into the Mid-Atlantic is right there too.
The energy consumption was pretty darn high. Meanwhile, OPEC can just pump more regular oil. Keystone XL was never about energy dependency.
Having to
beg OPEC(+) to pump more oil is the definition of energy dependence.
And to ask OPEC+ to pump more oil while at the same time trying to shut down domestic pipelines is what I am talking about with regards to Dems being in a bind between wanting to do two contradictory things.
Note also that some OPEC oil is oil sands too. Particularly Venezuela with their Orinoco Belt.
Lastly, while oil sands are more energy intensive than light oil (e.g. from Bakken), the difference is not nearly as high as made out by radical environmentalists like Bill McKibben.
Meanwhile oil/gas production while Obama was President soared America into first place in both globally.
Cum hoc, ergo propter hoc.
US oil and gas production increased thanks to the shale revolution using hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking) and not because of anything Obama did.
As you can see, the shale revolution started before Obama. It merely continued during his presidency.
In fact, while Obama initially supported the "all of the above" approach to energy, later on he moved toward the ecomentalist wing of the Democratic Party, even blocking the Dakota Access Pipeline (that is moving light sweet fracked oil from the Bakken formation).
The issue right now is that there is a arbitrary undersupply of oil globally. Oil nations want to make up for the losses a couple years ago.
It's not arbitrary. It's a well-known phenomenon of overshoot. When prices increase, demand decreases, economy may slow down, decreasing demand further. Supply increases, but only so much can be done quickly, and new projects have long lead times. The increased supply, when it finally happens, decreases prices. So demand increases, and there are fewer new projects.
That has been happening for decades. Theoretically, a market dominant body like OPEC is supposed to smooth out these cycles, just like Texas Railroad Commission did back in the day, but OPEC is pretty dysfunctional at best of times.
And of course, the Pandemic was a huge shock to the system (oil futures traded in the negative at one point!) and that affected supply.
So ultimately, this definitely shows why we should want to get away from oil powered cars because the cost to power them is quite arbitrary and open to manipulation. Electricity from nuclear would be a bit more stable.
I agree, but it will take a couple of decades to transition. In the meantime, we need to get more of our oil from domestic production and neighbors like Canada, and less from OPEC+.
). But weren't they stuffing the reserve when oil was bare bones cheap? The issue here is that we don't have a supply problem. But the market is acting like we do.
