Monday, November 9, 2015

Oil's Well That Ends Well

You won't be seeing one of  these any time soon in the American heartland. 
The Obama administration announced that, after a long period of deliberation, it will not allow the TransCanada oil company to build the Keystone XL pipeline to transport the dirtiest oil on the planet - tar sands from the Canadian province of Alberta - to Port Arthur, Texas for global distribution, thus averting a possible environmental catastrophe in the Great Plains . . . at least through January 2017.  The Republican presidential candidates have all come out against the decision, each one promising to reconsider it if elected.  What they won't reconsider is legalization allowing Americans to reap more of the financial benefits of the oil instead of letting foreigners make all the money off it.  They're too obsessed with the possibility of creating the minuscule number of jobs - mostly temporary construction jobs - that the pipeline would produce so they can say that they want to do something about employment.  I'm for Martin O'Malley for the Democratic presidential nomination, and he was against the pipeline from the start.  However, as much as I am repelled by the possibility of a Hillary Clinton Presidency - and as disturbed as I am by the fact that it was only just a few weeks ago that she took a stand against Keystone XL after months of fence-sitting (why did she want the President to go first?  So it wouldn't look like she was disloyal to her ex-boss?), I might have to hold my nose and vote for her in the 2016 general election if she's the nominee.  It would be too much of a risk to vote for a third-party or write-in candidate if New Jersey somehow ended up in play and the possibility of a Republican President succeeding Obama and approving the pipeline were very real. 
In the meantime, though, Obama is leading on the environment.  As fate would have it, his approval of applications for Royal Dutch Shell to drill for oil in the Chukchi Sea off the coast Alaska turned out to be in his favor.  Shell, citing the low price of oil and the small amounts of oil to be found, abandoned its plans to drill there, and now drilling there is closed.  My theory?  Obama may be a constitutional lawyer, but he must have looked at the geology of the Chukchi Sea before approving the drilling leases for Shell, knowing it would be a bust.  How else can you explain the outcome of the whole darn thing?
The man is a genius! :-D  

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