Rob Rogers for February 20, 2015

And another refinery fire just before the high travel spring break time.Maintenance is scheduled for the summer drive time.

Funny how every year they have these maintenance problems just about a month before the driving season starts. I have always been amazed how much profit there is in oil. The price of gas can drop by fifty percent and you don’t see any oil company even having a hit of a problem. In any other industry there would probably be mass layoffs and shedding of assets that are not needed.

So, what is the solution?Refine the crude and ship from Canada?Nationalize the petroleum industry?Switch to electric cars?

Use a Pipeline?

The main objections are route, which will carry it over the largest aquifer in the Midwest (= the source of most farmed food in this country), and also the insistence on the part of one party that there need be no payments into an insurance policy for the inevitable need for cleanup. So when it ruptures (which it will), the cost of cleanup will fall to the US taxpayer. Both of those objections are enough for me. But I’m only one person, and I don’t contribute to campaigns, so I don’t exist.

We COULD work on our infrastructure to make derailments less likely. Oh, but that would cost money; how could we give tax cuts AND spend money (on something not military related)?

We COULD create regulations (eyeroll) requiring more safety of rail cars that transport petroleum to make them less likely to rupture and less likely to explode. But all regulations cost jobs, right?

So, the right answer? Do nothing, deal with the consequences later. This works for almost every problem we might have.

First of all, saying “there is no scientific reason to be against this pipeline more than any others,” is not true. The oil coming from the shale fields is particularly toxic and contaminated.Second of all, saying they are all equal does not mean they are good. They could well all be bad, and given the history of leaks and contamination circulating around any pipeline makes that very clear, especially when companies like Koch Industries have shown they are willing to reduce inspections, reduce fixes, and in effect dump poisons to save themselves money.There is a unique opportunity here in that it is not built, and it can be stopped from going to use.

The simple fact is the “Keystone” is a project with an end result even the “Kops” would have found crazy. It’s the land grab and product, for export, not the pipeline itself.