florentine wrote:

It does NOT benefit us. The oil is not ours. It is being pumped to the gulf so it can be shipped to other countries. We don't get the oil. The Koch brothers own the lease on the Canadian tar sands and they will make big bucks from this pipeline. That is why they have bought all these politicians to pass this so they can get richer while we get nothing. The real clincher is there are things written into the agreement that state if there is a leak or catastrophe, they are not responsible for clean up or compensation for damages their pipeline has caused. WE are responsible. We get no benefits from this and the American people are getting screwed by promises that this is a big job created. It will create only 35 permanent jobs when all is said and done. This is a bad, bad thing for America.

And to top it off, our legislators have given the power of eminant domain to a foreign COMPANY.....not country, but company. A foreign company can now come in to this country and take American's land by eminent domain. I don't like when our government takes citizens' land and I especially don't like it when a foreign company is allowed to do it.

This whole pipeline fiasco is made up of so many bad decisions. It is mind boggling
that this has gotten so many supporters.

It does indirectly benefit the U.S. florentine. You can't look at oil being pumped out of the ground as belonging to that country. We're a global society. All of the oil goes into a big pool and the prices are set on a global commodities market. Yes, we may ship oil out of the U.S. to a buyer in India, but we buy oil from Kuwait, and Germany buys oil from Russia, but it is priced (generally) on an open global market.

And while yes, people make money from drilling and shipping oil, we benefit from it because need it. To power cars, get goods to market, to hop on a plane and travel somewhere. We need this oil. Hopefully not forever, but until we have a better way of producing energy, we're gonna be sucking down oil.

Again, if the State Department can perform its review and say it's worth it to have the pipeline and we can mitigate the risk of spills to the greatest extent possible, then I say build the darn thing.

What I have hated about all this is it being a political football that people get all up in arms about when in reality, it's 95% built already. 

Let's move on and focus on more improtant stuff.

Last edited by TheLagerLad (2/25/2015 10:53 am)

Florentine nailed it.  Any counter arguments?

I'm trying to recall the last time we had worldwide stability in oil prices.

Especially when market manipulators have more influence on pricing than the so-called free market.

Here's an article from the Business Insider that shows how unrefined oil is moved around the U.S. today:

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-us-transports-oil-in-5-graphics-2015-2

Last edited by Rongone (2/25/2015 3:59 pm)

I guess it's all in how you define "stability".

40-60% swings from Jan. 2010 to Jan. 2015 (or whatever that far right vertical line is supposed to represent)
Or 30% swings from Feb. 2011 to Aug. 2014.

If that is the definition of pricing stability, then the increase in the price of my multigrain Cheerios over that same period is a real bargain.

Rongone wrote:

I guess it's all in how you define "stability".

40-60% swings from Jan. 2010 to Jan. 2015 (or whatever that far right vertical line is supposed to represent)
Or 30% swings from Feb. 2011 to Aug. 2014.

If that is the definition of pricing stability, then the increase in the price of my multigrain Cheerios over that same period is a real bargain.

There are certainly going to be dips and peaks, but if you look from Feb 2011 to August 2014, for the most part oil didn't go $10 above or below the $110 a barrel mark. That's what I mean by stability.