Oil extraction is a delicate concern for the EPA and environmental activists because the process involves surface-mining the tar sands, which can potentially — but rarely, if ever, severely — scar the landscape and emit more greenhouse gas than traditional crude oil production. But in the case of the Keystone XL pipeline, extraction methods are irrelevant to the United States; the decision is up to the Canadian government. President Obama's decision is not whether to extract the oil, but whether to transport it.
So regardless of Obama's decision to authorize the pipeline, the oil will likely be produced — which, if the President does not grant approval, means only that instead of the oil heading south to the United States, it will exit to China and other countries. A subsidiary of the China National Oil Company has already offered $2.1 billion to buy a Canadian oil sands producer in Calgary.
Indeed, observers say this is what environmentalist groups neglect to note: that Canada's selling oil to China, India, and other countries will have no environmental benefit for the United States. But what it will do is abandon thousands of high-paying jobs and further increase U.S. energy dependence on oil produced by tyrannical regimes.A new study published by Canada's Fraser Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute rates the mores and values of 38 oil-producing nations, analyzing eight measurements of women's freedoms and 17 different variables of civil, political, and economic freedoms. According to the study, of all 38 countries, Canada and Norway are the only two with whom the United States shares common values and individual freedoms.
In support of the pipeline, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, posed an argument on the U.S. House floor:
What does the pipeline mean for the United States and for Illinois? For starters it means creating more than 100,000 American jobs. It means 1.3 million barrels of oil from our friends to the North, which means we will need less oil from the Middle East, less oil from Venezuela, less oil from countries we can no longer rely on and are not friendly to the interests of the United States. And, it means $5.2 billion in new property tax revenue for bankrupt states.
The State Department has at their discretion the authority to decide if the US benefits from the pipeline. The fact is that someone will benefit from the oil out of Alberta. If it's not the United States it will be China, unless we take immediate action to expand the Keystone pipeline — and it will be American businesses and consumers who will suffer the consequences from our inaction.
