The National Post reports in its Saturday edition the Keystone XL pipeline was the most contentious issue in Canada-U.S. relations in almost a decade. The Post's Bruce Yaccato writes, however, that since President Barack Obama vetoed a Republican bill that would have allowed the pipeline to proceed three months ago, the issue has disappeared from the radar screen. How about that other epic battle, the one against Enbridge's recently completed Flanagan South pipeline from Pontiac, Ill., to Cushing, Okla.? It is 50,000 barrels a day larger than Keystone. Sorry. There was no battle. As of this year it ships 400,000 bpd of oil south from Cushing to Freeport, Tex.
So it seems that while the Keystone XL may be dead, or at least hibernating indefinitely, its elders, cousins and offspring are very much alive and growing at a galloping rate.
They and many other projects like them planned or under way are built for the same purpose that made Keystone XL the Darth Vader of pipelines. The St. Louis Beacon called Flanagan "the newest artery in a major reworking of the continent's oil system" with the object of taking more and more Canadian crude south to the oil sands mecca of the mammoth U.S. Gulf Coast refineries.
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