Transcanada and the XL Pipeline: The Saga Continues (Calgary Herald)

This story has taken many different twists and turns.  And with each step, a little more complex.  Nebraska legislation might be unconstitutional.  I am beginning to think that with either a positive or negative decision, the legal battles will probably continue.  And as the operators and producers have said, there will be a plan B.  The Northern Gateway project is not having any easier a time though.  It may very well be that the KM Transmountain option be the defacto winner by timing alone.  Where billions upon billions have been and continue to be invested to improve output, the resulting cash flow must come.  While I am sure there are many different descriptors, these operators and producers are not the Federal Reserve Bank - and able to print their own currency.  The business has to make sense, at some level.  Stranded resources hold very little value.  Asian and emerging market demand for oil will bring a solution somewhere, somehow.  There always are alternatives.

Oilsands executives lay out Keystone XL alternatives

Suncor and Canadian Natural Resources say other options exist

By Rebecca Penty, Calgary Herald November 3, 2011 6:05 PM

Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., which operates the Horizon oilsands project, has 120,000 barrels of crude per day committed to transport through the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline until 2020, which company president Steve Laut said could be sent elsewhere should the United States reject the contentious pipeline.

Photograph by: External, Supplied

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CALGARY — Amid growing suggestions the U.S. State Department will delay or potentially reject the Keystone XL oil pipeline, oilsands executives counting on ramped up exports of bitumen said Thursday there are other options.

Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. president Steve Laut said oilsands producers could pursue other markets, if the U.S. denies a presidential permit needed for construction of the proposed 2,700-kilometre crude oil pipeline from Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast.

CNRL has 120,000 barrels per day “locked up on Keystone for 20 years,” said Laut, who’s betting on U.S. approval. That’s about one-fifth of the company’s current total production of oil and gas.

Laut, speaking on a conference call, said if the up to 900,000 barrel-per-day line doesn’t win approval south of the border, it’s “pretty clear” U.S. markets are “not in favour” of Canadian oil.

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