The biggest foreign lease holder in Canada’s oil sands isn’t Exxon Mobil or Chevron. It’s the Koch brothers. - The Washington Post

http://www.kochexploration.com/canada/Default.aspx

Koch Brothers Positioned To Be Big Winners If Keystone XL Pipeline Is Approved | Reuters

Its no secret that American refiners have had their hand in this pot for years, and been expanding their own capacities for Canadian MUD quietly in anticipation. (Will provide links if needed of course, but "sacrifice zones" has already been alluded too)

Tom can't wait for his boys to hit glory. Hope he has a good supply of diapers.

Koch making money from production is teneuous at best, I expect the benefit they will reap is the sale of the leases to others, meanwhile it has no bearing on the approval of XL, just another media beatup, must be a slow news day

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We process our own petroleum

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yes but apparently there is a need to transport it to American refineries . I see the enviro-wackos are trying to block the pipeline to the Pacific coast too.

Clete of course it is a cheap beat up. Tal has no issues with Warren Buffet's Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad trains inefficiently transporting the oil to the refineries. A North Dakota town had to be evacuated after a BNSF train carrying crude derailed and caught fire ;so don't give me the bs that rail is safer . Now of course Buffet is a smart businessman and hedged his bets . He actually favors the XL . Owning some land the pipeline would traverse is just a coincidence.

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I expect you have waited six years to use the phrase Obama gridlock Tom but you never complained about the Boehner gridlock

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yeah I did ...Bonehead didn't gridlock the government enough. At the end of the last session ,he caved on just about everything passing the so called 'Cromnibus' ;a massive Federal spending bill that denies the new Congress the power to vote for a new budget until their term is almost up. If you hadn't noticed yet ,I am no fan of the Bonehead leadership.

Tom I begin to think you are no fan of any leadership which doesn't have a Bush tag associated with it, but as far as rail being safe, where did I say that. Stop verballing me. Yes a pipeline is a safer option, but the responsible thing is for Canada to develop their processing capacity but not much chance of that with the industry being in foreign hands. We all know some billionaire will benefit somewhere and so will some politician so lets get on with it. Maybe those job creators will actually create some jobs

they don't have capacity for the same reason the US has not built a new refinery since 1976. (although some diesel refineries may be built in North Dakota) . As you see with the pipeline ;there is too much NIMBY attitudes both here and in Canada.

Bush ? I supported his leadership in the war against jihadistan. I opposed most of his domestic agenda and will not support his brother in the GOP primaries.

Yes and if you don't have the refinery capacity what is the point of oil sufficiency?

it's a good point. With the resistance to the transportation of the crude ;imagine what the wacko's would say about building more refining capability . Also new refineries need the coking capability to refine the heavy grade crude. Where does the US have that capacity ? Correct ;in the Gulf region. Refineries are being built overseas ....so the export ban of American crude becomes even more absurd .

Neither of you know the oil business except for the politics, so you probably don't know the flow of oil between refineries throughout North America, nor the expansion of existing refineries to step up capabilities of different oil qualities. All you had to do was Google it.

Rail accidents, like most are due more to human error than equipment failure but since time is money we push the existing equipment, often old and poorly maintained (maintenance costs) beyond its reasonable limits. Think car accidents, or guns in the wrong hands.

Jumping on the Kochs is no beat up, just recognizing they have had a plan to make money from developing certain products for a very long time like most rich moguls. The XL pipeline is but a small part of the equation, albeit the most public.

no it's easy to beat up on them and ignore the rich who donate to the progressive causes. The Koch Bros are underwriting many of the hospitals in NYC ( like $100 million to NY Presbyterian Hospital to help build a new hospital ) ;and other hospitals across the country like your M.D. Anderson Cancer Center . Maybe that's their greed talking too . They also underwrite research at 245 universities across the county . And yes ;they donate extensively to environmental causes. What do they get as thanks ? A $25 million donation funding scholarships for minority students prompted one Ivy League professor to urge the rejection of the "tainted" gift.

Paints a different picture from your Harry Reid's' un-American' ,and Harry Belafonte irrational rants .

Yes I know existing refineries have undergone renovations . After almost 50 years you would think they'd have to. It probably would've been more efficient to tear them down and rebuild . But you know how that goes with excessive regulation etc.

Why is who the investors are an issue? Is someone afraid there might be a little more resource available to fund superpacs? I think it is all sour grapes from nar-do-well politicians putting up a smoke screen to mask their allegiences to big money. You know you can't build any polluting industry in a first world country anymore, our senses have left us, but it lets us beat those developing countries over the head about carbon while lowering our own emissions

paraclete , “I think it is good high cost extraction operations like shale shut down, they are big polluters anyway”Paraclete sounds like your didn’t do the numbers here and rubber stamping. Im numbers /facts guy first

The skinny on Fracking, Reps back in 2008 motto was Drill baby Drill Obama made fun of that. I’m from Pa frack country. I hear all this pollution in fracking and I laugh because those people NEVER looked all he NumbersBecause of Frackking The U.S. gas prices have fallen so dramatically over time that you spend a hell of a lot less out of you weekly paycheck to go to Work, 90% of jobs created on PA was Fracking Reps accomplished this yet Obama recently took credit for that which he not only factually incorrect he and Dems tried to stop it..

Now for the criers of pollution Fracking causes That said lets put that pollution numbers to a test of Fracking and what it caused and saved in pollution Nat gas is the cleanest and now cheapest energy we have. I for instance changed my Apt boilers from oil to Nat gas Think how much that Diff was in pollution now multiply that in the US to million of oil boilers to Nat gas heating

Amazing how dems complain about pollution and what also killed me was they hid that Clinton Spearheaded the Trade act with China ( Im an expert on this) This is what caused the Recession Bush had ZIP to do with China on our shelves. We lost over 42,000 factories to Chinas cheap labor and that buffer Pre 2000 was US import tax.

That direct result was World coal consumption rose 54% from 2000 to 2011 and most of that was China putting coal plants online daily that had little pollution controls on talk about WORLD pollution WOW! China's coal use grew by 325 million tons in 2011, accounting for 87% of the 374 million ton global increase in coal use. Of the 2.9 billion tons of global coal demand growth since 2000, China accounted for 2.3 billion tons (82%). China now accounts for 47% of global coal consumption—almost as much as the entire rest of the world combined. US coal usage Of all the coal burned on the planet the U.S. accounts for only 6%China is the result of a more than 200% increase in Chinese electric generation since 2000, fueled primarily by coal.

China's coal demand growth averaged 9% per year from 2000 to 2010, more than double the global growth rate of 4% and significantly higher than global growth excluding China, which averaged only 1%

Its funny my city hard core Dems HATED fracking BUT they also changed over from oil heat to gas and saved 10s of thousand In city budget not to mention LESS pollution by untold tonsFracking was so impacting on US oil import prices that recently the Middle East Lowered US gas barrel prices and not other countries so they can put Fracking out of business. Not rocket science So paraclete , why would you say “I think it is good high cost extraction operations like shale shut down? This doesn’t make sense the COST of frackking was so good that that company and everything around that made money. YOU also benefited directly in heating your home and at the gas pump weekly for years now .

21boat, I think the equation works differently in different places, but we need to get past the b/s that anyone is actually worried about carbon, industry isn't. Climate change is real and has been for the last 10,000 years, it is just convenient right now, but some industries like fracking are a concern, it pollutes ground water. Where I come from gas prices are going through the roof so not a good alternative and the fracking industry is trying to use this as leverage. Frankly I don't care if shale extraction shuts down it is a major environmental problem and yes I do the important numbers like what does it cost to run a car and a household.

I'm not worried about China, that will change over time because air quality will become an important issue there and drive change. I was there 10 years ago and never saw the sun all the time I was there, so I can't imagine what it is like now. China's industry will back off but remember all that carbon they are pumping out has been diverted from western economies and we claim what good results we have achieved. B/S, we have achieved nothing but slight of hand

15 towns in NY on the Pennsylvania borderland want to secede from NY and become part of Pennsylvania. It isn't hard to figure out why . Pennsylvania allows fracking for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale. Governor Andrew Il Duce Cuomo has banned fracking in NY State . That part of the Keystone State is booming . Across the border in NY ,residents live in a depressed economy that has not enjoyed economic prosperity in my lifetime ,and perhaps even longer .

They can always move to where the boom is, like the millions who have done it because the mills and factories shut down, and moved elsewhere. Here in Texas a lot of towns are booming, but in N.Texas they are banning fracking here because of earthquakes. Why Cuomo isn't jumping on the boom is another matter.

New York fracking boosters, foes ponder what's next

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While Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration has announced its intention to prohibit large-scale hydraulic fracturing from going ahead in New York, the state Department of Environmental Conservation has not yet issued an order making it formal. To do that, the DEC will have to issue a final Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement, a voluminous document that Commissioner Joseph Martens says should be completed by the end of March

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So why have NY'ers not moved to PA, instead of waiting for a politician to bring them a job? I can tell you why because this is about landowners, not just ordinary citizens. Ordinary citizens will not reap the large benefits from energy leases but large landowners may.

You should have voted the guy out last election, but another chance comes in 2018.

9.0 percent of the state’s 2000 population, on net, left the state for another state between 2000 and 2011, the highest such figure in the nation. NY was recently ranked the LEAST FREE state in the country . Guess which one ranked 1st ......... North Dakota ,where the fracking boom has been greatest !
Freedom in the 50 States 2013 | New York Overall Freedom | Mercatus Center

The idiots here in NY are so programed to vote for the Democrat machine that they voted in Rangel despite his corruption . They repeatedly sent Sheldon Silver back to Albany despite knowing he was a crook . They made il Duce a twice elected Governor even though he may have been single handedly the person most responsible for the housing bubble and crash .

I hear ya Tom, I feel the same about Perry, and Cruz, and HOPE Abbot is different, because I respected him as the states attorney.

uh yeah . Perry's under indictment for doing his job and threatening to use his veto power. Il Duce has a Federal prosecutor who most likely will charge him with obstruction of justice regarding the circumstances related to dismissing the Moreland Commission that was investigating corruption in Albany. Cuomo dismissed the Commission when it got to close to exposing the corruption of Cuomo's gumbas in the State .
What they are doing to Perry is the same cr@p they tried to do to Tom DeLay ,and what the Alaska Dems tried on Sarah Palin.

Big money big corruption it was ever so