rangerone314 wrote:Question, if the pipeline is built and the planned expansions to Port Arthur and Houston are also built, what prevents the oil from being refined into gasoline there and then exported overseas to customers willing to pay?
They are exporting refined gasoline
now that isn't used in the Gulf area. Don't you know that?
rangerone314 wrote:Second question, if the gasoline is exported, how does that help gas prices in the US?
Its called the law of supply and demand. If you increase the supply of oil coming into the US by one million barrels a day coming down the Keystone XL pipeline, the price of gasoline will drop for US consumers, especially in the Gulf Coast states. Any surplus will continue to be exported, as happens now.
rangerone314 wrote:Third question, why not build refineries onsite or close to the tar sands and then truck it to the US cities that will consume it?
Three reasons (1) oil refineries are immensely expensive bits of infrastructure. It doesn't make much sense to spend tens of billions of dollars on new refineries in northern Alberta when you've got perfectly good old refineries with a trained workforce waiting for oil to refine already standing there along the Gulf Coast. (2) Oil refineries employ thousands of highly paid people, who in turn require tens of thousands of people to supply them with food, booze, clothing etc. Have you ever been to northern Alberta? There is NOTHING there. You wouldn't just be building new refineries in northern Alberta----you'd have to build an entire city in the wilderness to house, feed, clothe, and support the Refinery workforce----. (3) Even if you did refine it in northern ALberta, you'd
still need a pipeline to get it to the USA. Do you have any idea how many trucks you'd need to bring a million barrels a day from Alberta to the USA?
