U.S. Making More Oil, Using Less: No National Interest in Building Keystone XL

Well, heck: if I'm going to be on some South Dakota emergency management terrorist watch list, I might as well be at the top of that list!

No one needs to send a bomb threat to make this point: booming domestic oil production and decreasing supply (we talked about this on Sunday!) make the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline unnecessary to national security:

Given the American petroleum boom, it is now harder to make the case that the oil the line would carry is vitally needed to quench the nation's thirst for fuel.

Instead, analysts say that in this era of plenty the Keystone’s main function isn't meeting U.S. needs, but getting oil from the land-locked province of Alberta to overseas markets via U.S. refineries on the Texas coast. Two pipeline projects from Alberta to the Canadian coast face such stiff opposition that some analysts say they're unlikely to be built.

..."With this outlook, why would the United States need the controversial Keystone XL pipeline?" asked Earle Gray, the former editor of Oilweek magazine and author of several books about Canadian oil, in the Toronto Star.

"We do not really need the oil," said an editorial entitled "Pipeline to Nowhere" by Jerald L. Schnoor, editor in chief of Environmental Science & Technology, published this month by the American Chemical Society. Schnoor said the real key to securing energy independence is to use less oil [John H. Cushman, Jr., "With U.S. Awash in Oil, Nat'l Interest Argument for Keystone Weakens," Inside Climate News, 2013.05.21].

The boom threatening the Keystone XL pipeline isn't some eco-terrorists dreamed up by corporate fascists. It's Americans producing more oil and using less. That's what really terrifies the oil profiteers.

And now I think I'll walk to work.