Binger wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 2:00 pmSo, let's get back to what Biden did do. Did he sign an executive order to shut down a working pipeline? Nope. He didn't do that. And as a liberal, I don't want to get busted worshiping a straw man, so I don't want to say that the executive order closed a working pipeline. Did Joe Biden sign an executive order to stop production? Nope, as a liberal I don't want to say that Joe did that, because I want to tell the truth. What did Joe Biden do? He signed an executive order to stop construction on the Keystone Pipeline. And this did what, Kevin? It stopped a project that required capital, including capital that had already been committed. And investors don't like capital to be wasted and neither do executives.
Given that the status of Keystone had been in flux for well over a decade prior, with legal challenges all along the way - including even some addressing eminent domain challenges in Texas* (now there’s a good grievance for a proclaimed populist to sink their teeth into) - and that ‘investors’ have always factored that risk into their strategy, then it might be, say, silly to pretend that canceling Keystone almost two years ago is responsible for a dramatic and quick run-up in the cost of gasoline worldwide over the last few months.
It may be the case that prices at the pump would be this high if Biden had not signed the executive orders that he signed.
Yep. That would indeed be the case, especially if you were thinking that Keystone would even be within several years of completion at this point if not killed off by that EO.
Maybe there’s … something else … something more relevant and recent … that could have affected pump prices more greatly?
*regarding those eminent domain cases - from the Texas Tribune, a decade ago - https://www.texastribune.org/2012/02/17 ... -backlash/
As the White House and Congress battle it out over the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, the Canadian company that wants to build it is still using its land-seizure powers to get property easements for the ambitious project.
And it’s ruffling some feathers in a politically conservative patch of Texas.
Several landowners along the proposed pipeline route say TransCanada has bullied them into selling their property by asserting “eminent domain” authority, the same power that governments use to seize land for highways and other public infrastructure projects. A property rights coalition tracking the condemnation proceedings has uncovered at least 89 land condemnation lawsuits involving TransCanada in 17 counties from the Red River to the Gulf Coast — cases that could test the limits of a private company's power to condemn property.
One of the landowners, Lamar County farmer Julia Trigg Crawford, will face off with the pipeline giant on Friday morning at a court hearing in Paris, Texas. Crawford got a rare restraining order halting any further encroachment on her land until questions surrounding TransCanada's right to condemn her property for the pipeline can be resolved.
“I’m just an angry steward of the land,” Crawford said. “A foreign-owned, for-profit, nonpermitted pipeline has taken a Texan’s land. Doesn’t sound right, does it?”
Crawford is opposed to the pipeline, which would carry tar sands oil from Canada, and has concerns about potential contamination of a creek she uses for crop irrigation. Her 600-acre farm, which straddles the Red River on the Oklahoma border, also contains numerous archaeological remnants of a Caddo Indian village.
The land seizure proceedings are continuing even though the White House rejected TransCanada’s application for an international pipeline permit, which included the proposed Gulf Coast segment that would run from Cushing, Okla., to Houston and Port Arthur.