OT...Getting Sick of this Spit

[Awesome Sauce Malone]

You don't start talking or enacting change the day of a tragedy. Wait until the emotions die down and the issue can be discussed rationally. I despise the left for their jumping on every crisis and tragedy before the victim's bodies are cold.

Right because people spouting rhetoric and their agendas during time of tragedy is clearly just a thing of the left.

[SHOCKvalue]

A better framework would have prevented this. We need more frameworks. Going forward, in an impactful, dedicated manner, initiating a common and forward thinking framework, we can overcome the challenges of the past and lead us to greater unity and purpose in the future.

You clearly have a future in this. There's a job title that has not yet been invented, and a resume with an objective yet to be polished, for such a tract. It used to be considered using many words to say nothing at all, but today is a marketable skill in corporate and government work.

[shocka khan]

Right because people spouting rhetoric and their agendas during time of tragedy is clearly just a thing of the left.

Pot, meet Shock Ref.....

[shocka khan]

A better framework would have prevented this. We need more frameworks. Going forward, in an impactful, dedicated manner, initiating a common and forward thinking framework, we can overcome the challenges of the past and lead us to greater unity and purpose in the future.

If you're trying to build a repeatable process (determining whether a person should/shouldn't own a gun is a process) a framework ensures a consistent, repeatable process. Why do you think engineers develop standards?

[shocka khan]

let emotions die down = let's stall this puppy and hope we go awhile before the next one so we don't have to enact any change at all.

[pinstripers]

"All the jobs" supposedly created by the Trans-Canada pipeline will disappear as soon as the pipeline is built. As an construction engineer you ought to understand that.

The second part of this, and the part that you don't know about, is that the pipeline will actually carry a tar sand slurry from Canada, which at the current price of oil (and the future price for at least the next year or two) will not support the added expense of extracting the oil from the tar sands.

The third part of this, which again you don't know, is this: They were digging open-air pits in the Beaumont, Texas area as a proof of concept. Extracting the oil from the tar sand requires the use of noxious solvents in an open-air environment which means that chemical vapors from the process will drift over peoples businesses and homes. Not only that, what do you do with the remnants of the solvent and contaminated sand? That's another superfund site waiting to happen. Like always, the chemical companies make the mess and then the taxpayers pay to clean it up (corporate welfare at its best).

So now that they can't ship the stuff through Nebraska, they are just gonna stop producing it?.........No, didn't think so.

[shocka khan]

Kahn you really need to ease up on the guessing of what people do. I'm not a civil engineer. The word engineer has not once graced me in an academic setting or a professional one.

The oil that was going to be transported with the additional capacity that the Keystone XL would have allowed will now be coming here via train and semi-truck. Out of the three methods of oil transport there, which one do you suppose poses the smallest risk to life and property? It is a pretty easy answer, because the best option is better in such regards by order of magnitude.

The point isn't about the construction jobs or environmental tangents you ran down; it is about keeping money away from the middle east kooks. ANY North American oil production helps that.

Right now, operators in the shale oil fields are shutting down rigs. They cannot produce the oil at a price low enough to guarantee returns. Big oil is cancelling and mothballing projects that were making money or could have made money with oil at $90 per barrel. People are being laid off by the thousands here in Houston and all indications point to even more layoffs next year. Several acquaintences of mine have lost their jobs.

Tar sand oil costs $27 per barrel to produce, according to this:

http://oil-price.net/en/articles/are-canadian-tar-sands-profitable.php

This does not reflect refining costs, marketing costs or distribution costs.

The price of oil today is $41 per barrel. If you add $10 per barrel (at least) for the costs listed above, you can't make money. I'd bet if we knew the true costs beyond extraction are known, it might not be profitable until it reaches $60 or $70.

At $80, as the article states, there is lots of money to be made.

When will we see $80 again? I don't know. see my ruminations below.

Obama did something, in my opinion, that was politically expedient by vetoing this legislation. It is somewhat akin to kicking the can down the road as it is easy for him to say 'no', when there will be no demand for the pipeline for the next couple of years. Current forecasts indicate that there will be no turnaround in the oil industry until at least 2017, and it may be later in 2017 than earlier.

Obama will be long gone by then and he has made the liberals in the democratic party (environmentalists) happy. Politicians always like to hit the easy button - like asking people to 'pray' everytime there's a mass shooting instead of confronting the NRA because it preserves their jobs.

My apologies for getting the line of work you're in wrong, shockvalue.

And Pin, as a businessman, certainly you would know that you don't invest in a losing proposition. This is currently a losing proposition and the oil companies are cutting back on capital budgets. Only investment dollars will be directed to projects with an ROI that will support the current price of oil, so there's your answer.

[MoValley John]

So now that they can't ship the stuff through Nebraska, they are just gonna stop producing it?.........No, didn't think so.

The whole Trans Canada Pipeline XL2 was all about inexpensive transportation of oil. The fight over the pipeline had everything to do with the possibility of the Ogallala Aquifer being contaminated from a massive pipeline leak. The oil is still making its way to Texas, it is still being refined, and it is still being exported. Nothing about Beaumont oil pits, chemicals or tar sands has changed. Simply, a pipeline didn't get built and Warren Buffet is getting paid to transport instead. Burlington Northern is getting rich and oil trains derail all the time.

[ShockerGorilla]

How did those strict gun laws in France help the situation in Paris? Weren't those guns that were used in the terrorist attacks illegal?

[SHOCKvalue]

The price of oil is completely immaterial to a project paid by private dollars. You've been down this trail before kahn, and it isn't less asinine this time.

[shocka khan]

The whole Trans Canada Pipeline XL2 was all about inexpensive transportation of oil. The fight over the pipeline had everything to do with the possibility of the Ogallala Aquifer being contaminated from a massive pipeline leak. The oil is still making its way to Texas, it is still being refined, and it is still being exported. Nothing about Beaumont oil pits, chemicals or tar sands has changed. Simply, a pipeline didn't get built and Warren Buffet is getting paid to transport instead. Burlington Northern is getting rich and oil trains derail all the time.

Please tell me the last time a BURLINGTON NORTHERN SANTA FE (not BN) trainload of oil derailed. I've seen CSX, I've seen Norfolk and Southern, but no BNSF.

Buffet is probably getting rich, I agree. But at least make sure you make correct statements about who's trains are derailing.

This is from Wikipedia:
"The proposed Keystone XL Pipeline (Phase IV) would have essentially duplicated the Phase I pipeline between Hardisty, Alberta, and Steele City, Nebraska,[10] with a shorter route and a larger-diameter pipe. It would run through Baker, Montana, where American-produced light crude oil from the Williston Basin (Bakken formation) of Montana and North Dakota would be added[8] to the Keystone's current throughput of synthetic crude oil (syncrude) and diluted bitumen (dilbit) from the oil sands of Canada. However, after more than six years of review, the United States President Barack Obama announced on November 6, 2015, his administration's rejection of the fourth phase.So there you go.

Diluted Bitumen. Tar Sand. OK?

[shocka khan]

The price of oil is completely immaterial to a project paid by private dollars. You've been down this trail before kahn, and it isn't less asinine this time.

Speak of asnine, I would never confuse you for a financial accounting (i.e. budgetary) expert for an oil company. Look at what the pipeline was going to be used for in Wikipedia. Also see was going to carry shale oil.

Oil companies such as Shell and Exxon aren't funding pie-in-the-sky projects right now. They are funding projects that make them money with the current price of oil.

This is akin to the bridge to nowhere.

Suppose we built a pipeline and OOPS, no product to ship.

Kinda makes the pipeline a moot point, doesn't it.

[SHOCKvalue]

Speak of asnine, I would never confuse you for a financial accounting (i.e. budgetary) expert for an oil company. Look at what the pipeline was going to be used for in Wikipedia. Also see was going to carry shale oil.

Oil companies such as Shell and Exxon aren't funding pie-in-the-sky projects right now. They are funding projects that make them money with the current price of oil.

This is akin to the bridge to nowhere.

Suppose we built a pipeline and OOPS, no product to ship.

Kinda makes the pipeline a moot point, doesn't it.

It is a bridge to nowhere with someone else's money. The government shouldn't be in the business of telling a private corporation when it can and can't spend their money based on the government's discretion.

That's not what Obummer was trying to do; no, he was acting out of the environmental irrational side of his brain that day, but it is your repeating tangent on SN for whatever reason.

If the price of gas goes to $5/gallon, I'm not walking up to my neighbor and telling him he can't buy that F250 because it doesn't make economic sense. Do you do that in your own life? How's that go for you exactly?

[shocka khan]

It is a bridge to nowhere with someone else's money. The government shouldn't be in the business of telling a private corporation when it can and can't spend their money based on the government's discretion.

I can agree with that thought. Obama took the easy way out. Politicians taking the easy way out instead of actually making an accountable decision is a problem both political parties have.

[MoValley John]

Please tell me the last time a BURLINGTON NORTHERN SANTA FE (not BN) trainload of oil derailed. I've seen CSX, I've seen Norfolk and Southern, but no BNSF.

Buffet is probably getting rich, I agree. But at least make sure you make correct statements about who's trains are derailing.

This is from Wikipedia:
"The proposed Keystone XL Pipeline (Phase IV) would have essentially duplicated the Phase I pipeline between Hardisty, Alberta, and Steele City, Nebraska,[10] with a shorter route and a larger-diameter pipe. It would run through Baker, Montana, where American-produced light crude oil from the Williston Basin (Bakken formation) of Montana and North Dakota would be added[8] to the Keystone's current throughput of synthetic crude oil (syncrude) and diluted bitumen (dilbit) from the oil sands of Canada. However, after more than six years of review, the United States President Barack Obama announced on November 6, 2015, his administration's rejection of the fourth phase.So there you go.

Diluted Bitumen. Tar Sand. OK?

Buffet's trains are derailing.

http://m.omaha.com/money/bnsf-oil-train-derailment-prompts-evacuation-in-north-dakota-town/article_0713d928-f409-11e4-b811-472fe5a23676.html?mode=jqm

Furthermore, Buffett, Burlington Northern, BNSF, or whatever the **** you want to call them, owns all of the rail used for oil transportation in North Dakota to the border. Whatever label is painted on the engines or tank cars, Buffett gets the money. Buffett is responsible for the rail safety.