Saturday’s “Coffee Talk” with Tiff…

Coffee. Photo by Jonathan Thursfield.

It’s Saturday…

Coffee and Saturday morning’s go together like…

It is 8:00 a.m., Tiff time as I start writing my Saturday article…

I didn’t really have a plan that got derailed; it was more a thought I’ve been stewing on over the course of this week. You know the thoughts half-formed, just there on the tip of your overly taxed brain.

Well, it all started on March 7th, 2022, when I saw this tweet shared…

And all week the debates as old as time have come back to life…

But here’s the thought in my head, tickling the brain as a I “google” Keystone XL., everything.

What I learned on this “google” searching was not as surprising as it was the nagging stupid thought in my head that I could not get to form into “keyword” search terms.

It finally hit yesterday; When was the phase 4 of the XL part of the existing today Keystone pipeline expected to be complete?

I ran back to google thinking I nailed it this time when all I got was…

That’s not exactly right…

I got the timeline on when it was proposed; 2008.
I got the timeline when it was approved by the Alberta Government; 2010.
I got the food fight timeline of the push and pull between Obama’s government, the EPA, activists both for and against–that carried on from 2011 well into 2017, when Twice Impeached 45 approved the permit and things seemed to go from there.

But the projected completion date still even now eludes me. Based on other people’s words via Twitter seems the standard is that it would have been fully operational in 2023 carrying an estimated 830,000 barrels of oil a day between Alberta and Nebraska.

Anyhoo, my question is simply this, how would a project that wasn’t even complete or near completion by January 2021, ease gas prices today?

Reuters said in March of 2021, that the project in January of 2021 had only been about 8 percent complete:

Reuters spoke via email with James Stevenson, a spokesperson for the Canada Energy Regulator, which oversees the Canadian portion of the Keystone XL Pipeline (here). Stevenson confirmed that as of late 2020, about 152 kilometers, or 93 miles, of pipeline had been laid near the U.S.-Canada border. Therefore, about 8% of the planned 1,210-mile XL extension had been built by the time President Biden revoked the permit.

Reuters. 03/12/2021.

So isn’t the new revived talking point kind of moot?

Phase 4 wasn’t near completion; funding for the project according to Reuters:

At the time of the press release, the Government of Alberta had invested $1.1 billion in the project, largely covering the cost of construction through the end of 2020, according to TC Energy.

The press release also stated that the remaining $6.9 billion needed for construction was expected “to be largely made in 2021 and 2022 and funded through the combination of a US$4.2 billion project level credit facility to be fully guaranteed by the Government of Alberta and a US$2.7 billion investment by TC Energy.”

In other words, 14% of the investment was made in 2020, with the remaining 86% secured and expected to be paid in 2021 and 2022.

Reuters. 03/12/2021.

So, I don’t know maybe I’m looking at it wrong; I just don’t see how an incomplete extension of a pipeline could help our fuel costs today.

This is an Open Thread.

About the opinions in this article…

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About Tiff 2519 Articles
Member of the Free Press who is politically homeless and a political junkie.