Right now, oil is being isolated around the globe, and there is a major effort in shipping, trucking and otherwise transporting that oil around to a very finite number of refineries. Biology allows us to make these same fuels in a much more distributed fashion.
Right now, there are a limited number of customers for Canadian oil. Due to simple geography - and without the pipeline - it's really only cost effective for Canadian oil producers to sell their oil to North American customers, mostly American Midwesterners.
There is no excuse-and we should call a spade a spade-for chemical companies and oil refineries using our major rivers as pipelines for toxic waste. There is no excuse for communities to use other people's rivers as a dump for their raw sewage.
I flew a full string of 35 combat missions over some of the most heavily defended targets in Europe. We were hitting Hitler's oil refineries, his tank factories, his aircraft factories, his railway yards. Those were our prime targets.
Keystone would allow us to transport 700,000 barrels of oil a day from our northern neighbor Canada to refineries in the United States.
What auto and steel is to Ohio River Valley, refineries are to the oil regions. You wouldn't tell Silicon Valley you're going to put a moratorium on high-tech.
You know how much money the oil companies have? If you need some gas, just go fill your tank off and drive off - they're not going to miss it.
Keystone will deliver 830,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada, North Dakota, and Montana to Gulf Coast refineries.
No one does a better, cleaner, or environmental friendlier, than the United States, when it comes to drilling for oil, gas, coal, oil refineries and fish friendly hydroelectric.
Is it in our national interest to overheat the planet? That's the question Obama faces in deciding whether to approve Keystone XL, a 2,000-mile-long pipeline that will bring 500,000 barrels of tar-sand oil from Canada to oil refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.
