Keystone Pipeline would send Canadian oil to gulf coast

By JARED ANDERSON
Staff Writer

It’s pipeline season.

The Keystone Pipeline system is a system of oil pipelines that transports crude oil from the Alberta Tar Sands to American oil refineries in Illinois and Oklahoma. A proposed expansion to the pipeline system is known as the Keystone XL pipeline. If approved, the Keystone pipeline system will be expanded to the U.S. gulf coast.

“The  $13 billion (US) Keystone pipeline system will play an important role in linking a secure and growing supply of Canadian crude oil with the largest refining markets in the United States, significantly improving North American security supply,” according to the TransCanada Corporation website, the corporation that owns the Keystone Oil pipeline.

TransCanada also claims that “when completed, the Keystone Pipeline System is expected to provide five per cent of current U.S. petroleum-consumption needs and represent nine per cent of U.S. petroleum imports.

Once permitted and completed, the Keystone Gulf Coast Expansion project will supply roughly half the amount of oil the U.S. currently imports from the Middle East or Venezuela.”

Not everyone is happy with the Keystone XL oil pipeline, however.

Fiona McMurran, of the South Niagara chapter of the Council of Canadians, is opposed to the Keystone oil pipeline.

“I’m opposed to anything that’s going to increase the development of the tar sands,” McMurran said. She also mentioned the environmental dangers with the pipeline, noting the safety of water supplies (a major concern for the Council of Canadians), the Gulf of Mexico oil spill last year and the threat of another similar disaster, as well as the safety of tar sands workers.

“Canadians working in the oil sands are exposed to carcinogenic substances,” she said.

McMurran is also opposed to the pipeline for economic reasons, opposing the export of Canadian oil to the United States to be refined by American corporations and sold back to Canada.

“I think that Canada, as usual, is being shortchanged,” she added.