| Central Oklahoma plays a key role in petroleum distribution for North America. In fact, President Barack Obama traveled to Cushing, OK in 2015, to observe the completion of the original Keystone Pipeline, linking Alberta to Gulf ports near Houston, through Cushing's crude oil terminals. Cushing is also the site of a federal petroleum reserve tank field. The original Keystone pipeline is open & operational, but the KeystoneXL(KXL) is a separate 36" pipeline which was designed to more than double the flow capacity and shorten the route, across Montana, South Dakota, & Nebraska; rather than the Winnipeg route of the original 30" pipe. The existing Keystone pipe can send 700k barrels per day. The KXL would have more than doubled that, by adding another 830k of daily flow from not only Alberta, but also the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota & Montana. While the U.S. consumes about 20 million barrels per day, adding just 5% more oil supply, could send market prices far lower than the current asking price. When Obama stalled, and then cancelled the US federal permits for KXL, in 2015, the Canadian petroleum distributor, TC Energy waited him out and in January of 2017, President Donald Trump reversed Obama and ordered the KXL to resume, but only if U.S. steel products were used. On January 20, 2021, Biden immediately cancelled the KXL permits just minutes after taking his oath of office. Estimates say the restarted KXL was only about 10% installed, because new funding had to be secured after the 2015 Obama stoppage. |  |
 Cushing's massive pipeline terminal got even larger, with the recent addition of TransCanada Energy. | The original Keystone pipeline was a joint venture of Conoco/Phillips and TC Energy, but Conoco/Phillips was bought out more than a decade ago. KeystoneXL is completely mapped within the continental United States, and each state could build out their segments independently. But interstate commerce authority rests with the federal U.S. govt. So the linking segments could only be completed when a 'friendly administration' has the authority to approve it. Currently, Burlington Northern/Santa Fe(BNSF) Railroad transports massive amounts of crude oil from Canada to the USA. That railway is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, whose executive is Warren Buffet. Buffet has been rumored to have worked hard to convince Democrats to block his competition(pipelines). But BNSF has had their share of railway accidents & derailments. This undermines the narrative of radical environmentalists who say pipelines are too dangerous because they may someday have a leak. |
