More Smart Diplomacy (And Brilliant Energy Policy!)

From MarketWatch:

Canada opens a pipeline to China

Facing a Monday deadline, the government announced late Friday that the $15 billion bid the China National Offshore Oil Corp., or CNOOC Ltd. CEO +0.73% , made in July for Calgary-based Nexen Inc. CA:NXY -6.35% NXY -6.56% provides a “net benefit” for Canada.

It also approved a $5.2 billion takeover of Progress Energy Resources Corp. CA:PRQ -4.35% by Petronas, Malaysia’s national oil company. See: Canada OK's CNOOC-Nexen, Petronas-Progress bids.

How the government reached its decision is a bit of a mystery. Just a month ago it looked like national security concerns would scuttle the Petronas-Progress deal, which in turn cast a very dark cloud over the CNOOC-Nexen takeover.

...

Those betting correctly that the CNOOC-Nexen deal would go through — and the 99% of Nexen shareholders who voted for it — can now say with real conviction what they thought all along: Canada needs an new outlet for its surplus oil and gas.

Earlier this year the Obama administration rejected that part of the Keystone Pipeline project that would have carried oil from Canada to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico, essentially keeping output from Canada’s new oil shale fields bottled up north of the border.

The White House didn’t exactly kill the Keystone project, it just asked that it be revised to address environmental concerns.

There’s another way of looking at this cold shoulder from Uncle Sam. The U.S. has made huge production gains from its own oil shale boom, and that’s taken any urgency out of securing new imports from longtime supplier Canada.

Well, we have no need for Canadian natural gas but we should welcome their oil. As I understand it, part of the green Keystone fantasy was that if the US wouldn't take the shale oil from the Keystone pipeline, no one else would either. Dum de dum dum.

But let's find the silver lining - binding China a bit more tightly to North American energy resources may prompt China to be a bit more pacific in the Pacific.

Comments

[Jim Eagle]

Also, will need a new fleet of super-tankers and an expanded export facility near Vancouver. I wonder how the Cannuck greens are going to take that? Believe me tanking it isn't as efficient in terms of cost and schedule as a pipeline would have been but the ChiComs are the ones paying for it. A port in any storm, I guess.

[Ralph L]

Has anyone divined Obama's real reason for quashing Keystone? Trying to keep fossil fuel prices up?

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

--Has anyone divined Obama's real reason for quashing Keystone?--

Because doing so is bad for America?
Need we look further than that for anything he does?

[Jim Eagle]

Ralph L,

I noted back when this was the topic du jour that it was "crony capitalism" and payback to Buffett. He owns part of BNSF which is hauling the Bakken Field product on its tanker cars. If Keystone gets approved there is a branch line from Bakken that connects to it. Good bye BNSF's sweet little haulage deal. You also have his cronies in the renewable business that always benefit from choking off new fossil fuel supplies.

[Captain Hate]

Didn't Lurch and his fellow gasbags in the Senate reject Iraqi oil because of environmental concerns? Where were these concerns when, as he was getting his ass kicked in Desert Storm 1, Saddam Hussein just opened sll the oil spigots and set them on fire producing a local ecological nightmare?

[rse]

Ralph-Green energy gives the govt an excuse to reorganize and dictate the economy. Van Jones has actually said that is why he signed on because it allows govt to say this is where the Business will go and this is who you must hire (defined in terms of groups and credentials) and this is what you must pay.

All these schemes are created by people who do not understand economies at all and presume Keynesianism is valid. Then you have people who understand exactly how Cronyism works and are excellent political entrepreneurs. Except I guess about the airline business. But I am sure there was a reason for that. I just do not get that one.

[Jim Eagle]

Just under an hour to go for the big game.

Here is a good primer on the Army-Navy game.

Anchors Away For Honor and Glory: A History of Navy Football.

DoT knows most of these names and the history of the Desire team.

Its only a 10 minute YouTube but well done.

[Clarice]

Excuse my suspicious mind, but isn't it long overdue that we have more transparency about the funding of the eco movement? Who needs wars to undermine us when we have a lying media and armies of "non profits" to carry out your aims?

[Janet]

Who needs wars to undermine us when we have a lying media and armies of "non profits" to carry out your aims?

Amen.

...how about the people that owned the land where the Keystone Pipeline was gonna run. Will they be able to sue like the Pigford farmers for lost revenue?

[narciso]

As daddy, could tell you Janet, the NGO's are using the natives, to first first block the AGIA line, and most recently the keystone pipeline,

[bgates]

binding China a bit more tightly to North American energy resources may prompt China to be a bit more pacific in the Pacific,

in the same way that binding America to Middle East energy resources prompted America to mothball the Fifth and Sixth Fleets.

[narciso]

Well more genius from our betters, along those same lines;

[narciso]

I think there is more than meets the eye;

http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/egypt-arrests-terror-suspect-linked-benghazi-attack

[Buckeye]

Does anyone have an estimate of how much federal debt could be retired if oil and gas on federal lands was tapped?

[Captain Hate]

Against my better judgement, I read (and reread) Nooner's column and I still can't figure out what her point was. I came to the conclusion that she got so hammered that EJ Dionne made sense to her and then just started writing whatever came into her mostly empty head. It was like experiencing the beginning of "The Sound and Fury" again when it dawned on me that Faulkner was weaving in writing from the standpoint of a retarded person; only without the artistry.

I wish I had that ten minutes back. Fairleigh Dickinson would be well advised to assemble a team of students to continually revise her wiki entry and have her education end with high school.

[Captain Hate]

Was it Clarice that predicted that the JEF would ok Keystone after the election then he didn't need the greens any more?

[Porchlight]

Just imagine the Dept of Energy under President Palin. A girl can dream.

[narciso]

I gained a little more respect for him, after his collection, 'the Second Plane' however, cheap shots like his piece in the Beast about the Republican convention, almost earn him the contempt this reviewer gives him;

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324705104578149304027759438.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

[Jim Eagle]

If you use Fed lands only, then we become a net-net-net petroleum exporter while becoming 100% energy independent. We become our own OPEC and they become small potatoes. The problem is does India, China, and other energy starved states want to be beholden to America or would they rather we be competitors for the same product from the ME and Russia.

This is not a scientific poll.

[narciso]

No, they wouldn't but how is it, every country, except us (and Israel) can act in our self interest,

[Captain Hate]

narc, I'd always wondered if he was any good from a distance.

[narciso]

Well his output varies, that passage about 'Einstein's Children' was one that Steyn noted in one of his books, even though they are on the same page about the Islamofascist question, now.

[Spending cuts first!--jimmyk]

But let's find the silver lining - binding China a bit more tightly to North American energy resources may prompt China to be a bit more pacific in the Pacific.

Also, these are world commodity markets--however Canada finds an outlet for its production, it will push down prices.

[Clarice]

jimmyk, I hate it when people know what they are talking about.

[Clarice]

I did predict that, CH. Looks like Canada pulled a no no--they called Zero's bluff.

[Ralph L]

however Canada finds an outlet for its production, it will push down prices
Can they push it below our cost to extract it in the US? The Saudis would do this intentionally--one reason our domestic production is lower than it once was.

[Spending cuts first!--jimmyk]

Can they push it below our cost to extract it in the US?

Maybe for some sites. By the way, I'm not saying we shouldn't build the pipeline, or it doesn't matter. It might not matter much for world oil prices, but it makes sense for us to get more of our oil from Canada, if only for security and stability. Plus, if they tried to cut us off we could just invade them. :)

[narciso]

The whole notion, and this is why Soros and the Sauds were funding the opposition to Keystone, is it makes us less dependent on everyone from the BEND and Boko Haram to that same coterie of princes, Of course, the Huntress filed suit against the Bush administration's EPA that tried to block domestic production in Alaska, using spurious SkyDragon signs, that she had the data to disprove, hence the Canadian Menace,

[narciso]

Is there a large enough finish he can be slapped with.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/12/08/msnbc-host-energy-is-just-too-darn-cheap/

[Clarice]

Oh, just shoot me..

Drudge's top story is all the choices poor Hillary has to make about what to do until she runs on 2016.

[Jim Eagle]

Well, Clarice, if you listened to Judge Jeannine tonight, Hill has a lot more to think about then 2016.

I don't think she has the energy for a washed up hag to run for anything. She looks totally washed up. Even Bill looks like he has HIV or something and is shrinking away like a midget in an XL suit.

[narciso]

Well Caroline Glick, comes close to capturing the absurdity of the times,

http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2012/12/blame-canada----the-palestinia.php

[narciso]

Seeing as he was the first to spread the voting machine paranoia, a medieval fear of vaccines, and the premier spokesman for his family's SCAM
franchise, this doesn't surprise;

http://dougpowers.com/2012/12/08/rfk-jr-right-wing-media/

[narciso]

Really, you don't say Bruce, but they are 'mostly secular' anyways;

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/03/al-qaeda-3-0-terrorism-s-emergent-new-power-bases.html

[Gus]

Hillary looks like an old drunk.

[narciso]

Rick missed his monthly dose of 'unexpected' news;

http://www.oc-breeze.com/2012/12/07/25235_california-state-revenues-10-8-below-budget-projections-in-november/

[Gus]

Narciso, wait until we go over the cliff.
Obama will be California's Kervorkian. They are suicidal, Obama is there to help.

[daddy]

TM,

Look on the bright side.

If the Keystone Pipeline project had been approved, it would have created many thousands of jobs in the US, thereby causing the US Unemployment numbers to go thru the roof.

[Gus]

Daddy, the KEYSTONE deal, is another piece in the puzzle that I have now solved. Obama doesn't care that China now has us OVER THE BARREL....pun intended.
Daddy, you're smart. This CANNOT be by ACCIDENT.
Every decision Obama makes, creates less jobs, less economy, less strength and less security for America. It's NOT BY ACCIDENT.

[narciso]

They do look at '1984' like a Cookbook, or at least a how to guide,

[Gus]

There will be George Orwell, bridges, and building and highways, and crematoriums in the NOT SO BRAVE NEW WORLD.

[Gus]

Our street names, will be purged. Lincoln Ave, will be Soylent St. Washington Blvd, in Milwaukee, will be THE PEOPLES AVENUE.

[narciso]

No it will be Alinsky Avenue, and Howard Zinn Boulevard.

[daddy]

I'm waiting for the push to get rid of the "Slaveholders" on our paper currency: (ie) Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Grant.

Makes one wonder what new Icon's they would propose to take their place. Any guesses?

Here's mine:

[AL]

First, Canadian oil companies do not extract oil from shale. We have much higher quality oil resources in tar sands.

Second, NEXEN-extracted oil will not go to China. It will be sold to highest bidder at terminal’s outlets. It is the law of the land.

Third, most likely Pacific outlets will be Cherry Point and Anacortes WA terminals, which will receive Alberta oil through upgraded Transmountain Pipeline, which, BTW, is owned by US company (Kinder Morgan).