Prime Minister: Canada oil may go to China without US pipeline

OTTAWA — Delays in US approval of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline to carry oil from Alberta has forced Canada to consider a "different track" that could see the oil shipped to China instead, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said.

"I am very serious about selling our oil off this continent, selling our energy products off to Asia. I think we have to do that," Harper told broadcaster CTV in a year-end interview.

"When I was down in the United States recently it was interesting, I ran into several senior Americans who all said 'Don't worry we'll get Keystone done. You can sell all of your oil to us.' I said, 'Yeah we'd love to but I think the problem is now that we're on a different track."

Supporters say the plan to bring oil from Canada's tar sands to the United States is the ultimate shovel-ready job creation project and would spur the hiring of thousands of workers.

Environmental activists fear an accident along the 1,700-mile (2,700-kilometer) pipeline extension would be potentially disastrous for aquifers in central US Great Plains states.

Others oppose the multibillion-dollar project because exploiting the tar sands requires energy that generates a large volume of greenhouse gases that scientists blame for global warming.

The Obama administration has ordered an extra environmental assessment of a possible new route through Nebraska, which could delay a final decision until after next November's election.

That move prompted Obama's opponents to accuse him of dodging a difficult issue to avoid angering sections of his Democratic political base vote.

Russian oil rig sinks: 4 dead, 49 missing

Oil-drilling rig with 76 aboard overturns in Russia's Far East

An oil plattform east of Sakhalin Island/ Reuter

By msnbc.com staff

An offshore oil-drilling rig with 76 people on board overturned in the Sea of Okhotsk in Russia’s Far East, Russia Today reported Sunday.

There was no word on survivors, the news channel said.

A distress signal was sent while the platform was being towed by an icebreaker through high seas and strong winds, Russia Today said.

The platform was about 125 miles off Sakhalin Island.

Israel-Iran: La Guerra que Occidente debe evitar

Los halcones de Israel pueden estar muy cerca de desatar una guerra a gran escala con Irán. El pasado lunes 28 de noviembre, las fuerzas de operaciones especiales israelitas mas como conocidas como la "Mano de Dios", hicieron estallar una parte de la instalación nuclear iraní  de Isfahan.

 

En otro incidente, una explosion en Teheran provoca la muerte de un general irani.

De acuerdo con el Times de Londres, Dan Meridor, ministro de inteligencia israeli, implicitament asumio la responsabilidad con los hechos: "Hay países que imponen sanciones económicas y hay países que actúan de otra manera para hacer frente a la amenaza nuclear iraní."
     

Por su parte el mayor general Giora Eiland, ex director de la seguridad nacional de Israel, declaro a la radio del Ejército de Israel que la explosión Isfahan no fue un accidente: "No hay muchas coincidencias, y cuando hay tantos eventos es probable que haya algún tipo de mano que guía, aunque tal vez es la mano de Dios"

 Otro ex funcionario de inteligencia israelí, menciona al menos dos otras explosiones que habrian neutralizado bases de lanzamiento del misil de alcance medio Shahab-3.

La respuesta "oficial" de Iran llego en la forma del ataque de los estudiantes extremistas a la embajada del Reino Unido en Teheran.  No hay ojo por ojo no por deseos de venganza de los halcones y la jerarquia eclesiastica, sino por imposibilidad de ejecutarla en proporcion a la incursion israeli. No es prudencia o sabidura politica sino impotencia que inflama las llamas de una guerra casi inevitable por parte de los protagonistas principales.

Al margen de las altisonantes declaraciones de los halcones israelies, el pequeno pero poderoso enclave judio en el corazon del medio oriente islamico, no puede actuar a gran escala en solitario. 

 

Ahora mismo los estados mayores politico-militares de un Occidente envuelto en la mayor crisis economica desde la gran recesion [en un escenario optimista] deben estar evaluando cuidadosamente pero  con toda celeridad los impactos que sufririan si una guerra de estas caracteristicas llegara a desatarse.

Considerando solo la variante energetica [a lo que habria que anadir la reaccion del mundo arabe y musulman no solo de la region y el rol que China y Rusia adoptarian ante la conflagracion] de unas economias donde precios de $150 dolares el barril de crudo, provocan una recesion inmediata en sus maltrechas economias, la disminucion de la oferta diaria en el mercado mundial petrolero estimada en mas de 10 millones de barriles como resultado del conflicto, lanzaria los precios por encima de la barrera de los $200 dolares.

Enfrentados a movimientos sociales si bien poco organizados pero desestabilizadores como el Occupy Movement en muchas de las principales metropolis, huelgas de mas de dos millones de trabajadores publicos en el Reino Unido, una Zona Euro en crisis estructural cronica que amenaza su desintegracion, mientras su poblacion volcada en las plazas rechaza la aplicacion de los programas de austeridad previstos y una Union Europea que acaba de ser apuntalada por los bancos centrales occidentales para atenuar los negativos impactos en sus respectivos mercados, no es un escenario alentador para apoyar una incursion israeli en gran escala contra Iran.

#Oil abundance in #Canada provokes anxiety

An aerial view north of Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada, where the world's largest oil companies are building massive open pit mines to get at the oil sands. (AP file photo/Canadian Press, Eamon Mac Mahon)

Bloomberg

The helicopter swooping over once- pristine spruce forests provides a close-up view of why the province of Alberta, Canada, is among the planet’s most coveted — and contested — petroleum hot spots.

North of Fort McMurray, a boomtown serving tens of thousands of migrant workers, Syncrude Canada Ltd.’s oil-sands mine stretches 74 square miles.

Rivals Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (386) each have bought a piece of Syncrude, one of the dozens of companies that are blasting, digging and steaming soil laden with 143 billion barrels of molasseslike crude called bitumen, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue. Only Saudi Arabia, with 264 billion barrels, and Venezuela, with 211 billion, enjoy greater proven reserves, a BP Plc energy review found in June.

Some of the world’s biggest energy producers have poured C$123 billion (US$120 billion) into Canada’s oil sands since 1997. The Canadian Energy Research Institute, or CERI, predicts that these companies will pay another C$137 billion by 2020 to tap the Florida-sized region’s unique advantage: rising oil production taking place in a stable democracy that’s close to the massive American market.

‘Pot of Money’

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who began his career in the Edmonton mailroom of an Exxon unit called Imperial Oil Ltd., is encouraging the boom. He wants to pump as much as possible from reserves that were valued at $14 trillion in mid-November.

Harper, 52, is creating jobs and seeking new markets for a country that now sends 99 percent of its petroleum exports to the U.S. Environmentalists, alarmed by spills, desecrated forests and rising carbon emissions, want a moratorium on oil- sands projects not yet approved as they battle to curb the use of fossil fuels.

“Oil sands are a big enough pot of money to change the landscape,” says Peter Wells, chairman of Abingdon, England- based Neftex Petroleum Consultants Ltd. “That’s why everybody’s fighting over them. The Chinese want strategic supplies. Oil companies want profits. Environmentalists want to keep Alberta looking as it was.”

The U.S. government leapt into the fray in November. The State Department announced that it was delaying a decision on TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s proposed 1,661-mile (2,673-kilometer) pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. President Barack Obama, 50, pressured by environmentalists and citizens along the route, said his administration wanted to protect health, safety and natural resources on the pipeline’s path.More >

Global Energy Outlook

The True Tragedy: Bodo Oil Spills

AmnestyInternational

In August and December 2008, two major oil spills disrupted the lives of the 69,000 or so people living in Bodo, a town in Ogoniland in the Niger Delta. Both spills continued for weeks before they were stopped. Three years on, the prolonged failure of the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (Shell), a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, to clean up the oil that was spilled, continues to have catastrophic consequences for the Bodo community.

U.S. to Delay Decision on Pipeline Until After Election

nytimes.com
The Obama administration is preparing to delay a decision on the contested Keystone XL pipeline while it studies an alternate route, effectively pushing any action past the 2012 election... More >

Tom Murphy: The Fossil Fuel Joyride Is Over

Egypt-Israel Gas Pipeline Explosion

Canadian Business/  By Michael McCullough While TransCanada Corp. stands mired knee-deep in the Keystone XL oil pipeline debate, its biggest rival in its core gas business is getting a whole lot bigger. On Oct. 17 Kinder Morgan Inc., America’s biggest natural gas shipper, announced a US$21-billion bid to take over El Paso Corp., the No. 2. Together the companies own 125,000 kilometres of pipe.

"Now that KMP is by far the biggest pipeline distributor of natural gas, that will also give them pricing power over the market," Chris Jarvis, president of Caprock Risk Management told Reuters.

Like ExxonMobil’s US$41-billion acquisition of shale gas producer XTO Energy in 2009, this is a massive bet on the upside of suddenly cheap and abundant natural gas. Instead of hedging away from gas, as TransCanada and many other companies appear to be doing, it’s a bet that gas will play a much bigger role in our energy future, probably at the expense of oil.

A decade ago TransCanada Pipelines, as it was then known, was a pure-play natural gas shipper from producing areas in Western Canada to markets in Eastern Canada and the U.S. Midwest. Past CEO Hal Kvisle and his successor, Russ Girling, have since diversified into oil transportation and power generation.

Diversification is the conventional wisdom in Canada's energy business right now. Enbridge Inc., which used to control Canadian oil exports to the U.S., has become the largest gas distributor in Ontario and invested in wind farms. Enbridge boss Pat Daniel was just named Canada's 2011 CEO of the Year by Caldwell Partners in a nod to this strategy. By contrast, gas giant Encana Corp. was punished by investors following its spinoff of Cenovus Energy. Now TransCanada is staking a good deal of its future in an oil pipeline that could end up being rejected because of political considerations.

Kinder Morgan’s move is a rebuke to that thinking. Its investment in gas dwarfs the investment Kinder is contemplating in oil lines such as its Trans-Mountain system in Alberta and B.C. Only time will tell which strategy is the right one.

Petroleo: Cuba vendió el Esequibo

Analítica.com
Jesús Antonio Petit da Costa

Compatriotas: Así como España entregó a Inglaterra la isla de Trinidad, que pertenecía a su colonia venezolana, Cuba ha vendido a Guyana el Esequibo de su colonia venezolana. ¿Saben porqué? Se los diré.

Hace doscientos años había una colonia de España llamada Venezuela que incluía en su territorio la isla de Trinidad, la cual, por su posición estratégica, controla la navegación por el Orinoco. Como en toda colonia, las relaciones internacionales eran manejadas directamente por el Rey desde Madrid. Y sucedió que el Rey, en función de los intereses de España, y no de Venezuela, cedió la isla de Trinidad a Inglaterra. Era de suponerse lo que después ocurrió. Los ingleses usaron a Trinidad como base de operaciones para adentrarse en el Esequibo, territorio selvático que pertenecía a la provincia de Guayana, con cuya ocupación cerrarían totalmente la salida de Venezuela al Atlántico. ¿Qué hay en el Esequibo? Lo mismo que en Guayana: oro y toda clase de minerales valiosos.

Dice la historia sobre aquella época: “El comercio de Venezuela era muy codiciado pues su cacao gozaba de la mejor reputación en los mercados mundiales. Por su precio se colocó en el tercer lugar después del oro y de la plata” (Arcila). Entonces el Rey de España decidió centralizar este comercio y, al efecto, contrató a la Compañía Guipuzcoana, que le pagaba los beneficios. Era la Guipuzcoana la que vendía el cacao en el Caribe.

Doscientos años después Venezuela se hizo colonia de Cuba, con una diferencia en la conquista: mientras los españoles debieron pelear para vencer la resistencia indígena, los cubanos se apoderaron de la colonia sin disparar un tiro. Contra los cubanos no hubo resistencia indígena. ¿Porqué? Porque las puertas se las abrieron unos cipayos, pertenecientes a la tribu de los comunistas que estaba infiltrada esperando la señal del invasor. Entonces el Rey Fidel asumió las relaciones internacionales de la colonia. Trasladó la Cancillería a La Habana. A lo que quedó en Caracas, por no tener función alguna, la convirtió en refugio de damnificados. Para guardar las apariencias hay un ministro. Así en La Habana está la Cancillería, que decide en función de los intereses de Cuba, mientras en Caracas está el encargado de ejecutar estas decisiones, por lo cual no importa que sea un ignorante en la materia. Y hasta mejor es.

El Rey Fidel revivió la Guipuzcoana. Dijo: no es bueno que el petróleo sea manejado por la colonia sin control de la metrópoli. Hagamos lo siguiente: véndase directamente sólo a los gringos, y eso porque no aceptan comprarlo a la metrópoli, pero ya se sabe que de esta venta debe la colonia pagarnos tributo. Es un tributo llamado alcabala, porque en cada oficina Cuba tiene montada una alcabala que vigila para que los súbditos no le jueguen sucio. Agregó el Rey Fidel: del petróleo para el Caribe me encargo yo. Constitúyase Petro-Caribe, mi Guipuzcoana. Entrégueme la colonia su petróleo por esta vía, que yo me encargo de venderlo como hacía España con el cacao, quedándome con la parte del león.

Astuto como es el Rey Fidel se habrá dicho: el pueblo de mi colonia Venezuela fue en el pasado un “bravo pueblo”, y aunque ahora se ha vuelto un pueblo pendejo, debo tomar precauciones porque el Capitán General se ha enfermado y como ni siquiera él sabe el tiempo que le queda, y yo sí, puede ocurrir que, cuando falte, los venezolanos se alcen echando a mis cubanos y sus cipayos. Entonces el Rey Fidel llamó a los españoles de Repsol y les encargó buscar petróleo en el mar territorial de Cuba, por los lados del Golfo de México. Fracasado el primer intento, Repsol amenazó con no seguir. Cuba no tiene dinero, pero sí a un Rey inteligente al que se le ocurrió una idea genial. Hay un mar territorial que parece rico en petróleo. Es el mar del Esequibo. Díjole el Rey a Repsol: yo te doy el mar del Esequibo y tú sigues perforando en el de Cuba. Hecho el trato el Rey Fidel, en ejercicio de su poder soberano sobre la colonia, y sin consultar con sus súbditos, decidió que el Esequibo sea definitivamente de Guyana. Diabólico como es montó la trampa: Guyana le envía una carta a mi colonia diciéndole que el mar territorial del Esequibo es suyo, pero a esta carta la esconderemos para que se interprete como aceptación. Y, a cambio, Guyana le da las concesiones petroleras en este mar territorial a Repsol, como efectivamente ha sucedido.

En este relato no aparecen los jefes militares porque estaban en otro teatro echándoselas de machotes ante la oposición.

The Environmental Lobby's Cuba Hypocrisy

Capitol Hill Cubans
Last month, the nation's largest environmental organizations released a letter calling on President Obama to block (at all costs) the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would span from the tar sands of Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico.

Here's the letter:

Dear President Obama:

Many of the organizations we head do not engage in civil disobedience; some do. Regardless, speaking as individuals, we want to let you know that there is not an inch of daylight between our policy position on the Keystone Pipeline and those of the very civil protesters being arrested daily outside the White House. This is a terrible project–many of the country’s leading climate scientists have explained why in their letter last month to you. It risks many of our national treasures to leaks and spills. And it reduces incentives to make the transition to job-creating clean fuels.

You have a clear shot to deny the permit, without any interference from Congress. It’s perhaps the biggest climate test you face between now and the election. If you block it, you will trigger a surge of enthusiasm from the green base that supported you so strongly in the last election. We expect nothing less.

Sincerely,

Fred Krupp, Environmental Defense Fund
Michael Brune, Sierra Club
Frances Beinecke, Natural Resources Defense Council
Phil Radford, Greenpeace
Larry Schweiger, National Wildlife Federation
Erich Pica, Friends of the Earth
Rebecca Tarbotton, Rainforest Action Network
May Boeve, 350.org
Gene Karpinski, League of Conservation Voters
Margie Alt, Environment America
Kevin Knobloch, Union of Concerned Scientists

So why don't they join Congressional efforts to block (through punitive sanctions) foreign oil companies from drilling with Cuba's brutal dictatorship just 90 miles away?

Instead, they want President Obama to "work together" with the Castro regime in its drilling efforts.

Such hypocrisy.

Canada - Ezra Levant's Ethical Oil round-up

BP wants to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, but what about Cuba's drilling

Peak Oil: The true

These figures, here they are. (They are supposed to be highly confidential, but they have been circulated among us petroleum geologists.) Note that they do not incude the extra-heavy oil

	Discoveries (Gb)	Production (Gb)
2007	10.0	26.0
2008	13.0	26.3
2009	12.4	25.8
Total	35.4	78.1

The reality is that for each barrel produced less than 0.5 barrels have been discovered, and not 1.6! Oil continues to be consumed faster than it is discovered. This situation has lasted for a quarter of a century now. 

More in ClubOrlov >

The Oil Pipeline from Canada to US

#Oil - China's push to woo South Sudan

Posted By Edmund Downie   

Wow, that was fast. Just days after South Sudan achieved independence, the Chinese government has already established a vocational training program for welders in Juba. From Chinese state media outlet Xinhua:

JUBA - China has started a welder training course to help South Sudanese master knowledge and techniques relevant to the petroleum industry in which the newly-born nation has a large potential.
A total of 30 trainees selected from about 800 applicants are under the vocational training, the first of its kind in South Sudan, and are expected to be backbone workers in the petroleum industry in the future.

In the wake of South Sudan's vote this February to break away from Sudan, China has been working aggressively with both countries to maintain access to their oil reserves, most notably through Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir's visit to Beijing in late June. Before the split, Sudan exported more than half of its daily oil output to China and was China's third-largest trading partner in Africa. Now, though South Sudan contains 75 percent of the two countries' combined oil reserves, it continues to rely on Sudan for the bulk of the processing and transportation infrastructure, including a crucial port on the Red Sea.
The establishment of a program to train welders suggests that China would like to reduce South Sudan's dependency on Sudanese infrastructure. It's a sensible goal. Tensions over oil revenues figure to be a major sticking point in Sudan-South Sudan relations; the countries have yet to establish a plan to divide revenues in an industry that generates 90 percent of the north's hard currency and 98 percent of the south's revenues. Meanwhile, the invasion of the border region of Abyei by forces loyal to Bashir has highlighted the threat of a major conflict between the two countries. There are certainly more stable countries from which to import your oil, but, with domestic demand at near-record levels, China may not have much choice.

Is OPEC Headed for Collapse?

by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

In the comments section of one of my previous articles, a reader asked me whether the collapse of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC — responsible for 40% of the world’s petroleum output) is likely in the near future. Fair question, especially in light of the currently dysfunctional state of the Arab League. Are we really about to witness the end of a monopoly on global oil prices?

In short, it is too difficult to predict either way. I discussed earlier how the  Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC ) is starting to replace the Arab League as an inter-Arab political body and Sunni axis against Iran, shifting the onus of decision-making to the Gulf region. However, some of OPEC’s most prominent members — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, and Kuwait — are also part of the GCC, and it is notable that neither Syria nor Egypt, both of whose states of political turmoil have been responsible for the Arab League’s decline, is a major exporter of petroleum or member of OPEC. Thus, the growing importance of the GCC as opposed to the diminishing relevance of the Arab League is unlikely to have a major impact on OPEC’s future.

What is more interesting, however, is the conflict within OPEC between a bloc of states led by Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members, led chiefly by Iran and Venezuela, on the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) decision to tap into “strategic” (or “excess”) stockpiles of petroleum in an attempt to boost output, provide relief for high oil prices, and to stabilize the global economy. The IEA hopes to increase production by around 2 million barrels per day. Following a meeting that resulted in a deadlock at OPEC’s headquarters in Vienna on June 8, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait parted ways with other OPEC members and promised to raise production levels by 1.5 million barrels per day. Indeed, over the past month the Saudis have already increased output by approximately 500,000 barrels per day.

Now, ostensibly, Saudi Arabia is complying with the IEA’s initiative, but John Shimkus plausibly argues for another motive behind the Saudis’ behavior: namely, fear of Iran’s nuclear program, which is probably striving to develop nuclear weapons. As pointed out before, Iran has been at the head of an effort to block release of excess oil reserves. Hence, we should not be surprised if Saudi Arabia and its allies in OPEC might wish to flood the market with their own petroleum in the hope of bringing Iran’s government to the point of bankruptcy and thereby halting the Islamic Republic’s goals for its nuclear program.

Read more...

Interview 180: The Future of Natural Gas Supply to Europe

Michael Emerson is a Senior Research Fellow at the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies, which is an independent think-tank focused on probing European Union issues through research, debates and publications. During part of a 20-minute interview on February 21, 2011, Emerson discussed Europe's dependence on natural gas from the east, the current status of planned pipelines to deliver natural gas and Germany's role in the energy game with Russia.

Northstream, Nabucco and Southstream are three proposed pipelines that could deliver natural gas and oil to western Europe along routes running under the Baltic Sea to Germany, across Turkey to the Balkans and under the Black Sea to Bulgaria. The projected goal by the European Union and its neighbors is to diversify the sources of energy resources, thereby bypassing troubled transit routes of natural gas from Russia through Belarus and Ukraine. Emerson discusses in particular the current status of Nabucco and how Germany played a significant role in stepping back to allow the project to take shape.

Video: Emerson Interview Part 1

Video: Emerson Interview Part 2

Transcript: Michael Emerson