Keystone pipeline strategy up in smoke
23.02.12
"What we've got here is (a) failure to communicate."
Some will remember that line from the 1967 Hollywood hit Cool Hand Luke.
It pretty much sums up the outcome of the government's pro-Keystone pipeline strategy, or lack of one, unless bringing increased global scrutiny to Alberta's oilpatch and the trillions of dollars at stake and waking up a well-funded anti-oilsands lobby was the objective.
The "no-brainer" in all this is that the government took for granted the pipeline to the Texas Gulf Coast would be approved by Washington and 20,000 shovels would be in the ground digging a 2,700-km trench.
Bitumen-rich crude would flow at 830,000 barrels a day - a steady stream of cash would flow into government coffers and the pockets of oil barons.
With assurances of tens of thousands direct jobs and countless others in spinoffs, energy security for a generation and flowing tax revenues, the White House called a timeout.
More than three years in the making, two successful State Department reviews, environmental assessments, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the pipeline builder -TransCanada Corp. - were poised to open the bubbly.
Source: London Free Press