Oil and Gas Sector-Politics and Image

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

The heated debate over new export pipelines has morphed in recent days into a debate over foreign meddling into Canadian oil sands development.

The issue was thrust into prime time by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver when they questioned the legitimacy of foreign environmental organizations stirring the pot against the Northern Gateway pipeline, a Canadian project they have turned into an extension of their successful fight in the U.S. against Keystone XL.

Foreign groups shot back the debate over the oil sands is a global one, and that foreign oil companies are also meddling into Canadian affairs because they are driving their expansion.

Here’s the wrinkle: according to an independent poll by Toronto-based Forum Research Inc., Canadians are more worried about increasing foreign ownership in the oil and gas industry, which lately has seen a surge in Asian purchases, than about foreign environmental organizations targeting the oil sands.

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The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Don’t just follow the money — expose the hysterical misrepresentations and the tactics

Congressional Republican attempts to force U.S. President Barack Obama’s hand on the Keystone XL pipeline produced the required result on Wednesday, at least from the GOP perspective. The President gave the project the thumbs-down, and Republicans instantly castigated Mr. Obama as a job destroyer.

For his part, the President naturally made no mention of toadying to radical greens, and even claimed that he had nothing against the pipeline, which would create tens of thousands of jobs and is designed to take up to 900,000 barrels a day of diluted bitumen from the Alberta oil sands to the Gulf Coast. His rejection, rather, was due to Congress’s “rushed and arbitrary deadline,” which prevented the State Department from gathering material necessary to “protect the American people.”

Such electoral manoeuvering has hardly done Keystone sponsor TransCanada — or the oil sands more generally — any favours. Prime Minister Stephen Harper expressed “profound disappointment” at Wednesday’s decision, and reportedly told Mr. Obama of Canada’s determination to diversify export markets. This will be easier said than done.

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This article is from: http://www.troymedia.com/

The Keystone XL project would ensure the U.S, jobs, affordable energy and national security, which Obama purports to support

TORONTO, ON, Jan. 22, 2012/ Troy Media/ – Oilfield workers in Alberta, refinery workers in Texas and countless factory workers have now learned that the White House will not allow construction of an oil pipeline that would bring over half a million barrels of oil a day from Canada’s Alberta Province and North Dakota’s Bakken Field to refineries in Texas and Louisiana.

The job-killing decision was a victory for radical environmentalists and well-heeled U.S. foundations that have long battled Canadian oil sands companies and the U.S. oil and gas industry. Not in “the national interest”

U.S. President Barack Obama says Congress gave him insufficient time to examine environmental issues. TransCanada Keystone Pipeline LP can reapply, he added, if it reroutes the pipeline around Nebraska’s Ogallala Aquifer and Sand Hills area and addresses other concerns. In the meantime, the Administration insists, the project “would not serve the national interest.”

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The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Two people named Redford have sharply differing opinions about Barack Obama’s decision to block the contentious Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would have run from Alberta down to Texas. The obscure Redford (Alison, the Premier of Alberta) is “bitterly disappointed,” while the famous Redford (Robert, the Hollywood celebrity) is ecstatic. He calls it “a victory of historic proportions” against “one of the most nightmarish fossil fuel projects of our time.” Whose side you’re on may say a lot about where you live and who you voted for.

For environmentalists, the decision is a long-overdue down payment on Mr. Obama’s campaign promise to wean the U.S. from its dependency on oil. But it’s much more than that. It’s a stand against the rape and pillage of the planet by greedy corporate interests that have politicians in their pockets. These environmentalists don’t really care about safety matters such as oil leaks or possible pollution of the aquifers. It’s the oil sands they hate – the water-gulping, forest-devastating, carbon-spewing monster that’s despoiling Mother Earth.

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The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

It was the 2009 annual summer retreat of the Green Group – the chief executives, presidents and executive directors of the largest environmental organizations in the United States – and their Canadian counterparts had wrangled an invitation for the first time.

The U.S. environmental movement appeared to be on a roll, with a new ally in the White House, the House of Representatives on the verge of passing a climate bill, and guarded optimism about a breakthrough at the United Nations summit in Copenhagen later that year.

That June, the green leaders gathered at the Airlie Center, a historic farmhouse turned conference centre an hour’s drive from Washington, in rural Virginia. Billed as an “island of thought,” Airlie is a sylvan retreat for American progressives: It was there that Martin Luther King Jr. laid plans for the Poor People’s Campaign and U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson announced plans for the first national Earth Day.

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Robert J. Samuelson writes on economics for the Washington Post.

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico is an act of national insanity. It isn’t often that a president makes a decision that has no redeeming virtues and — beyond the symbolism — won’t even advance the goals of the groups that demanded it. All it tells us is that Obama is so obsessed with his re-election that, through some sort of political calculus, he believes that placating his environmental supporters will improve his chances.

Aside from the political and public relations victory, environmentalists won’t get much. Stopping the pipeline won’t halt the development of the tarsands, to which the Canadian government is committed; therefore, there will be little effect on global warming emissions. Indeed, Obama’s decision might add to them. If Canada builds a pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific for export to Asia, moving all that oil across the ocean by tanker will create extra emissions. There will also be the risk of added spills.

Now consider how Obama’s decision hurts the United States. For starters, it insults and antagonizes a strong ally; getting future Canadian cooperation on other issues will be harder.

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The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

It would seem that Wednesday the Obama White House put a dagger through the heart of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline. But did it? In a presidential election year, very little in American politics is exactly as it appears.

In accepting the State department’s recommendation that he not grant a construction permit to Keystone, President Barack Obama pointed out that he was heeding that advice not because of the merits of the pipeline project, but because “the rushed and arbitrary deadline insisted on by Congressional Republicans … prevented a full assessment of the pipeline’s impact, especially (on) the health and safety of the American people, as well as our environment.”

This is political theatre, pure and simple. It is intended solely to solidify the “green” vote behind Obama in November’s presidential election and, for the general electorate, to make it appear as if Mr. Obama’s Republican opponents are truly to blame for the thousands of jobs that will not be created.

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The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

The Obama administration on Wednesday denied a presidential permit for construction of the $7-billion Keystone XL pipeline, ruling that a proper environmental review could not be conducted before a 60-day deadline set by the U.S. Congress to rule on the controversial oilsands project.

But Calgary-based TransCanada Corp., the company behind the 2,700-kilometre pipeline, has been given the option of making a new application — and company officials confirmed they will propose an alternative route for Keystone XL that avoids environmentally sensitive areas in Nebraska.

In a statement released Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. State Department said its decision was “predicated on the fact that the Department does not have sufficient time to obtain the information necessary to assess whether the project, in its current state, is in the national interest.”

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The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

With U.S. President Barack Obama’s extreme decision Wednesday to deny a permit to the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline, Canada’s oil-sands industry, one of the few engines of investment and job creation in North America, stands on the brink of a slowdown.

Export pipeline capacity is expected to run out by around 2016, throwing today’s growth strategies into serious doubt.

Keystone XL, and its all-Canadian alternative, Northern Gateway, were supposed to be the main solutions to transporting growing oil sands production to new markets.

Both are stuck. To be sure, Keystone XL proponent TransCanada Corp. has been invited to apply for a new permit with a revised route that avoids environmentally sensitive areas in Nebraska. But the reality is that there will be no pipeline decision — and it could still be a ‘no’ — until at least after the November presidential election, and possibly longer.

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The Toronto Star, has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

OTTAWA—The federal government says it will renew efforts to ship Canadian oil to Asian markets after the White House rejected plans for a $7 billion pipeline to move Alberta crude into the U.S.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper told Barack Obama in a phone call Wednesday he was “profoundly disappointed” with the U.S. decision on the Keystone XL project and pointedly said that Canada would seek other markets for its energy exports.

Soon after the two leaders spoke, Obama made public his decision to deny the application by Canadian energy giant TransCanada Corp. to build the pipeline, citing a “rushed and arbitrary deadline” imposed by Congress to review the project.

“This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people,” Obama said in a statement.

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The Toronto Star, has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Alan Broadbent is past chair of the board and current board member of Tides Canada. He is chairman and CEO of Avana Capital Corp. and founder and chair of Maytree.

Hello. My name is Alan, and I’m a radical environmental extremist.

I don’t know how I ended up being part of a group with a radical environmental agenda. It all happened so gradually.

I do remember being invited to join the board of the Tides Canada Foundation when it was founded over a decade ago. It seemed innocent enough, a registered Canadian charity that offered Canadians a chance to donate to protecting the environment and creating socially just communities. In fact, it seemed so Canadian. Silly me, but hey, this was over a decade ago.

In fact, I used to tell people that Tides Canada was just like a community foundation, say the Vancouver Foundation or the Winnipeg Foundation, except that instead of a geographical community it was a community of interest. A community of people interested in the environment and social justice.

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