By 2020, the amount of Canadian oil shipped to the United States could double from current levels, increasing up to 5 million barrels per day and accounting for at least 40 percent of America’s oil imports. But that depends on the construction of the Keystone pipeline, a 1,700-mile artery extending from Alberta to Texas refineries at the Gulf of Mexico. Keystone will be the most modern pipeline in the world, equipped with monitoring devices to check the facility’s integrity. Most important, if construction of the Keystone pipeline is blocked, the Canadians won’t leave oil sands in the ground. China covets the oil and, if need be, a pipeline could be built to carry the oil to Pacific ports in Canada, where it would be loaded on tankers and shipped to Asian markets. Another thing: the Keystone pipeline would create 20,000 American jobs and nearly 120,000 indirect jobs as well as increase revenues for state and local governments along its route. It would be senseless to forfeit such a huge economic stimulus with guaranteed job creation and an estimated $20 billion in revenue at a time when 25 million Americans are looking for work. — Mark J. Perry, University of Michigan-Flint
While importing oil from Canada is arguably better than getting it from the Middle East, there are two major problems with this option. One is that we remain dependent on a highly polluting fuel source. The process of extracting and processing tar-sand oil comes with an especially heavy environmental toll. It contributes substantially more to greenhouse-gas emissions than conventionally produced oil. The second problem surrounds the building of new sections of pipeline from the Canadian oil fields in northern Alberta to refineries in Texas. The $7 billion, 1,700 mile-long Keystone XL pipeline could handle an extra 700,000 barrels of tar sands oil a day. But opponents argue that such pipelines have a heightened risk of oil spills due to the corrosive nature of tar-sands oil. The pipeline also would cross the shallow Ogallala Aquifer in Nebraska, one of the largest sources of fresh water in the world and vital for the region’s $20 billion agricultural operations. — Michael E. Kraft, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
