On Thursday the House passed legislation that would take control of the Keystone pipeline from President Obama who caved to demands of environmentalists and has kept the bill on hold. The Republicans have made the bill a part of their effort to fund the highways and infrastructure project. In addition, the bill would open drilling to parts of the Artic National Wildlife Refuge.
While the bill passed the Republican controlled house, its fate in the Democrat controlled Senate remains uncertain.
As Senate leaders were still negotiating whether or not to allow a vote on Keystone Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota, a key supporter of the $7 billion oil project, told Reuters, “I think on the merits we’re going to get it done. I don’t know when. I hope in the highway bill, but if not, we’ll stick with it.” Hoeven was the developer of legislation to give Congress the ability to grant TransCanada a permit for the project.
Republicans are capitalizing on soaring gas prices and a horrid economy to push the Keystone pipeline project. They argue it will create thousands of jobs and put the United States on a path toward energy independence from middle eastern nations.
You know it would be so simple to free ourselves from so-called Middle Eastern oil, since we only get 7% of our imported oil from the Middle East. 7%! We could allow those wells in the Gulf of Mexico, that the government would only allow to be a “test well”, those are wells that see just how much could be pumped from a particular site. There are wells in the Gulf of Mexico that could pump in excess of 500,000 barrels of oil a day but are only allowed to pump 5,000, as a “test”. It’s like, “Yep, there’s oil there.” And, “Yep, there’s enough to pump for twenty years at a half a million barrels a day!” But, they’re only getting a tiny percent of what they could pump. Well, I say give them the full permit to pump all they can pump.
The Keystone pipeline would generate hundreds of thousands of jobs because what they are telling us is the few thousands of jobs there would be on just the pipeline. They’re not telling us of all the “support” jobs there would be along the way in service industries in every kind of thing you can imagine it would take to do something like that. Everything from a small company that would supply bolts and other hardware to all the small cafe’s and motels who would have a boom in their business while the crews would be moving through their area. They would have to hire all kinds of extra help during those times, and there would be thousands of people who would be following the pipeline as it moved along down to Texas to.
I built all that kinds of equipment during my many years as a heavy equipment welder. I’ve built all kinds of heavy oil field equipment for temporary wells all the way to the heaviest equipment for deep land based wells that drill to 25 thousand feet. It takes a long time to come up with that kind of equipment and it costs millions of dollars. That kind of boon to our economy is what drove this nation to greatness during all the years America was the highest producer of oil and gas in the world, which included all the service industries that provided supplies and equipment for all those businesses for decades. Oil and gas still has a huge place in driving our economy. And no, it’s not the only game in town. There are millions of other disassociated businesses that drive other parts of our economy that have nothing to do with oil and gas, but that’s what makes America the super powerhouse it still is. That’s why Communist have had such a hard time taking control over this nation and it’s because we are still free to start a business without government intervention. You can start your own business in my city for $50 dollars. You get your license and you start making money right then. As long as a person is able to start a business and put it right in line with where the pipeline is going to be, the government can’t stop you. It’s like roaches, if you think you’ve got them under control, you don’t know about all the other one’s you don’t know about that are growing inside the wall.
Let the Senate get it’s liberal head out of it’s butt, and those Democrats who are from those states that will gain the most out of the pipeline need to tell Reid to “shove it!”, and then we’ll get some real “bipartisanship” going where Democrats understand what makes America go ’round.
You know if we cut off everyone except the countries right here in North and South America, we wouldn’t need to buy any oil from any other country. The only reason why we’re buying oil from the Arabs is because their oil is like honey and is dirt cheap to refine into gasoline. It was American and British oil explorers who found the oil in Saudi Arabia anyway. The stuff was practically sitting on top of the ground and the Arabs didn’t even care to know what it was. It wasn’t like they were set up just waiting for oil companies to show up and start negotiating for contracts. No, just the opposite, they didn’t care about it at all. And we signed hundred year(joke)contracts with them to have access to it. It was only after they realized how much money they were going to make off of it did they started taking more and more control of it since it was theirs to begin with. And the rest if history.
Everytime I hear a politician say, or talk about “American energy independence” it almost makes me puke. I know damn well they know we could do it overnight if they weren’t so damn worried about what it would do to all the money the Arabs make off of us.