President Obama’s latest smug comments on the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline suggest the Canadian project’s odds of being approved under his watch are waning.
Thankfully, Canada hasn’t stood still while the U.S. President dithered.
So many new pipeline options have emerged that Keystone XL’s relevance is diminishing as each one gains momentum.
Sure, it will be hard to fill Keystone XL’s void and promise over the short term — perhaps a couple of years around 2016 and 2017 until new pipeline options are up and running.
But over the long-term, Canada is better off fast-tracking oil market diversification to global markets that are not beholden to U.S. anti-oil interests and that remain very motivated to buy Canadian supplies.
Two all-Canadian options — TransCanada’s Energy East project from Alberta to New Brunswick, and pipelines from Alberta to the West Coast — made big leaps forward in the past few days.
On Friday, TransCanada, the Keystone XL proponent, said it’s optimistic about its Energy East project, involving a conversion to oil service of its gas Mainline that could start delivering Alberta oil as far as New Brunswick in 2018. TransCanada said it plans to finalize agreements with prospective shippers in the next two weeks. Energy East would single-handedly replace Keystone XL, which would not be ready to move oil until 2016 even if approved by the end of the year.