Keystone XL Pipeline – Where’s the Noise?

As the author notes below, on September 5, 2012, TransCanada (NYSE: TRP), the Canadian energy company hoping to build the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, submitted its final re-routing plan to the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and the U.S. State Department. This submission represents the latest step in what has become a more than four year approval process to build the 1,700 mile, $7 billion pipeline stretching from Alberta, Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast. If completed, this pipeline would transport up to 830,000 barrels of heavy crude per day from oil sand (or tar sand) deposits in western Canada to Steele City, Nebraska and from the Cushing, Oklahoma oil trading hub to refineries in Texas. It would be integrated into the existing Keystone pipeline system, which currently extends from the Canadian deposits to refineries in Illinois, Oklahoma, and other Midwestern states. The new project would both increase the Keystone’s transport capacity and link it with Gulf Coast refineries more technologically suited to process the heavy crude produced from oil sands.

The Keystone XL Pipeline was very much in the news a few months ago. Lately, there has not been much reporting on the pipeline. Here’s an interesting write-up on the history and current status of the Keystone XL Pipeline – click here.