Environmentalists have kept the Keystone XL pipeline from being finished. Pipelines are the safest way to move oil to oil terminals on various costs of the USA and Canada. They are not perfect. There is some risk. But there is risk in every project.

Now oil companies are bypassing the Keystone.  They are going to move the oil (in fact they are already moving the oil) via rail. Moving oil by rail is not as safe. But it is easier to add rail cars and more rail terminals than it is to get a pipeline approved.

Way to go environmental morons. (Warning. Link is to NY Times)

“Since July, plans have been announced for three large loading terminals in western Canada with the combined capacity of 350,000 barrels a day — equivalent to roughly 40 percent of the capacity of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that is designed to bring oil from western Alberta to refineries along the Gulf Coast.  Over all, Canada is poised to quadruple its rail-loading capacity over the next few years to as much as 900,000 barrels a day, up from 180,000 today.”

“The Canadians remain a few years behind producers in North Dakota, where the paucity of pipelines encouraged early oil explorers like EOG Resources to form a partnership with Burlington Northern Santa Fe to build terminals for the shipment of oil by rail to refineries across the country.  Today more than three-quarters of North Dakota’s production, which also was to move on the Keystone XL pipeline, is transported by rail. The Canadian oil producers took notice.”