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The problems Obama sees is he doesn't want "dirty" oil. It takes about 5-30% more energy to produce oilsands than from conventional method. Once you take shipping from the middle east into account the middle eastern oil is not much cleaner.
The other problem Obama sees is they are worried about pipeline leaks over this area in Nebraska. All I know there was a study done and it showed a pipeline would be perfectly safe. Anyways, wouldn't pipelines be safer than oil tankers? I also heard there are already some pipelines going through that area and there has been no problems.
The last thing people think that most of the oil is mined from the surface. The truth is only about 15% of it is mined from the surface and the rest is extracted underground using SAGD (Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage) technology. Plus the disturbance that is done on the surface will be reclaimed later which has to be paid for by the oil companies.
Canada has lots of environmental regulations where I don't think the other countries in the middle east have much at all. Plus getting oil from Canada would be from a stable source and the US will not be giving it's enemies money. There would also be 10,000 jobs created during the building period of the pipeline.

Do the environmental groups have trouble with Canadian oil pipelines because of their memories of places like Banff?

zeezrom wrote:Do the environmental groups have trouble with Canadian oil pipelines because of their memories of places like Banff?

Most the pipelines are underground so I don't think they have a problem with them.

Banff is a pretty cool place though and I have been there many times. I kind of prefer other parts of the Canadian rockies because Banff can be pretty busy.

I'm for building the pipeline, as long as 25% of all profits must be reinvested in producing clean energy...eventually we're going to run out of oil guys. The wind always blows though, the water always runs downhill, and the sun always shines.

Bond James Bond wrote:I'm for building the pipeline, as long as 25% of all profits must be reinvested in producing clean energy...eventually we're going to run out of oil guys. The wind always blows though, the water always runs downhill, and the sun always shines.

yes wind always blows but if those projects were economic companies would be building them like crazy. They are only economic if the government subsidizes them.

There are environmental impacts when it comes to damning rivers. You can't just put damns everywhere. Plus you need the water.

I'm not sure why solar panels are not everywhere. My guess is the economics don't even compare.

I do agree that we will have to switch from oil sometime but that will take it least 50 years without destroying the economy anymore. In the meantime we will have to use oil. by the way to extract oil from the oilsands it's probably going to take it least 100 years.

In the future my guess is we will see more use of natural gas. It's actually a pretty clean source of energy and there is a crap load of it to last 100's of years. Nuclear power is also very clean and the new nuclear plants are way safer than the ones built in the past.

we could use less energy too. But that is very un-Republican.

Rambo wrote:yes wind always blows but if those projects were economic companies would be building them like crazy. They are only economic if the government subsidizes them.

Windmill technology has progressed to the point where it actually is pretty economic in certain areas of the country. They are being built at a rapid clip even without subsidies. The Walker administration killed a ton of windmill proposals in my state, without subsidies, by making it near impossible for them to get permission to build. That's because he's beholden to oil interests, but sans Walker, there'd be more windmills here than there are now. The main problem with windmills is they are bad at providing a steady stream of power, so a community can't rely on them exclusively.

Wind will never work as a base load power producer. What we need is solid, reliable base load. You have to keep the grid up at a steady pace. This is why coal, oil, and hydropower are so popular. They are steady. Wind has too much variability so they only supplement with it. Problem is, you can't just turn the knob on a coal power plant to make way for wind power. Those suckers are massive titanics and it's dangerous and expensive to turn knobs. Steady is best for the base load.

What we really could use is lower consumption. But who wants that? Not me!

zeezrom wrote:What we really could use is lower consumption. But who wants that? Not me!

I'm all for technology that is more efficient, but you can't get the damn Republicans to get behind new light bulbs because the Terrorists will win via mercury poisoning and the more efficient light bulbs would decrease production of those damn incandescent bulbs that crap out after 200-400 hours of use.

EAllusion wrote:
Windmill technology has progressed to the point where it actually is pretty economic in certain areas of the country. They are being built at a rapid clip even without subsidies. The Walker administration killed a ton of windmill proposals in my state, without subsidies, by making it near impossible for them to get permission to build. That's because he's beholden to oil interests, but sans Walker, there'd be more windmills here than there are now. The main problem with windmills is they are bad at providing a steady stream of power, so a community can't rely on them exclusively.

They may be economic without subsidies but I don't think they come close to the economics of other sources of energy. Last I heard from my engineering professors is that windmills have a 25 years pay out period. This was about 4 years ago so maybe things have changed since then. Most companies don't want a 25 year pay out period.

I do agree that it's not a steady stream of power and that is a problem.