Oil Sands

NEW YORK — Canada's prime minister said Thursday that a controversial oil pipeline from his country to the U.S. Gulf Coast "absolutely needs to go ahead" and warned that the oil will be transported through America one way or another. Stephen Harper spoke on the Keystone XL project during a visit to New York City. The pipeline project carrying oil from Canada's tar sands would need approval from the U.S. State Department. "The only real immediate environmental issue here is, do we want to...

NEW YORK — Canada's prime minister said Thursday that a controversial oil pipeline from his country to the U.S. Gulf Coast "absolutely needs to go ahead" and warned that the oil will be transported through America one way or another. Stephen Harper spoke on the Keystone XL project during a visit to New York City. The pipeline project carrying oil from Canada's tar sands would need approval from the U.S. State Department. "The only real immediate environmental issue here is, do we want to...

When it comes to energy, America is lucky to be next to Canada, whose proven oil reserves are estimated by Oil and Gas Journal at 175 billion barrels. This ranks just behind Saudi Arabia (260 billion) and Venezuela (211 billion) and ahead of Iran (137 billion) and Iraq (115 billion). True, about 97 percent of Canada's reserves consist of Alberta's controversial oil sands, but new technologies and high oil prices have made them economically viable. Expanded production can provide the U.S. market with a growing source of secure oil for decades.

Exxon Mobil said that one of its pipelines leaked "a few thousand" barrels of Canadian heavy crude oil near Mayflower, Ark., prompting the evacuation of 22 homes and reinforcing concerns many critics have raised about the Keystone XL pipeline that is awaiting State Department approval. The pipeline breach took place late Friday, Exxon said, in the 20-inch diameter, 95,000-barrel-a-day Pegasus pipeline, which originates in Patoka, Ill., and carries crude oil to the Texas Gulf Coast, the country's...

Even if foes of the Keystone XL pipeline block it, companies seeking to get Canada's oil sands to U.S. and world markets could travel the old-fashioned way: by rail. While TransCanada has been trying to obtain a U.S. permit to build the 875-mile northern leg of its Keystone XL pipeline, Canadian and U.S. railroad companies have been busy installing new track and loading facilities to carry the oil sands crude from northern Alberta to refineries in the United States and Canada.

Exxon Mobil said that one of its pipelines leaked "a few thousand" barrels of Canadian heavy crude oil near Mayflower, Ark., prompting the evacuation of 22 homes and reinforcing concerns many critics have raised about the Keystone XL pipeline that is awaiting State Department approval. The pipeline breach took place late Friday, Exxon said, in the 20-inch diameter, 95,000-barrel-a-day Pegasus pipeline, which originates in Patoka, Ill., and carries crude oil to...

1 . The pipeline would have been catastrophic for global climate change. For opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline, the issue was one of simple math: The project would have facilitated increased production of Canadian oil sands, and a gallon of gasoline derived from oil sands produces 5 to 15 percent greater greenhouse gas emissions than a gallon of gasoline made from a typical barrel of conventional oil. Also, they noted, Canada's oil...

For more than five decades, the world's oil map has centered on the Middle East. No matter what new energy resources were discovered and developed elsewhere, virtually all forecasts indicated that U.S. reliance on Mideast oil supplies was destined to grow. This seemingly irreversible reality has shaped not only U.S. energy policy and economic policy, but also geopolitics and the entire global economy. But today, what appeared irreversible is being reversed. The outline of a new world oil map is emerging, and it is centered not on the...

Fort McMurray, ALBERTA — When Armand Morin was a junior in high school, hanging out with friends and doing badly in class, his uncle sat him down and told him to do something useful, such as train for a job in the oil industry. So he moved to Fort McMurray, enrolled in a community college program for process engineering and took a job at Shell. He just turned 23, and last year he made $176,000. After three years, he'll get a retention bonus. He bought his first home, a three-bedroom, two-story house, for...

President Obama, denouncing a "rushed and arbitrary deadline" set by congressional Republicans, announced Wednesday that he was rejecting a Canadian firm's application for a permit to build and operate the Keystone XL pipeline , a massive project that would have stretched from Canada's oil sands to refineries in Texas. Obama said that the Feb. 21 deadline, set by Congress as part of the two-month payroll tax cut extension , made it impossible to adequately review the project proposed by TransCanada.

Five years ago, a full-page ad blasting Exxon Mobil appeared in the Venezuelan newspaper Ultimas Noticias. Drawings of drops of oil went from black at the top of the page to red at the bottom. "Exxon turns oil into blood," the bold-face text declared. Addressing "Exxtranjero" — the Spanish word for foreigner, with an extra "x" — it used a slogan from the Spanish Civil War that roughly translates as "you will not pass. " The ad summed up the combative relationship the late Venezuelan...

Even if foes of the Keystone XL pipeline block it, companies seeking to get Canada's oil sands to U.S. and world markets could travel the old-fashioned way: by rail. While TransCanada has been trying to obtain a U.S. permit to build the 875-mile northern leg of its Keystone XL pipeline, Canadian and U.S. railroad companies have been busy installing new track and loading facilities to carry the oil sands crude from northern Alberta to refineries in the United States and...

The State Department released a draft environmental impact assessment of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline Friday, suggesting that the project would have little impact on climate change. Canada's oil sands will be developed even if President Obama denies a permit to the pipeline connecting the region to Gulf Coast refineries, the analysis said. Such a move also would not alter U.S. oil consumption, the report added. The...

Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Friday that he would stick to a "very open and transparent" permitting process for the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, adding, "I hope we will be able to make an announcement in the near term. " Emerging from a meeting with Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird, Kerry said, "We have a legitimate process that is underway, and I'm going to honor that. " He said it was "fair and accountable. " It was Kerry's first meeting as secretary with a...

As the State Department moves closer to deciding whether to issue a cross-border permit for the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada's oil sands, the chief executive of the Calgary-based pipeline company appealed Thursday for the U.S. government to balance environmental concerns with economic interests. During a visit to Washington, TransCanada chief executive Russ Girling also said that his company was exploring other routes to get the Canadian oil to world markets, including a possible retrofit of a...

The State Department is close to completing a draft of an environmental review that will help determine whether President Obama approves the Keystone XL pipeline , as environmental and energy industry groups sought to bolster their position with new information. Pipeline opponent Oil Change International released a report Thursday saying that estimates of greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands development have failed to include the full emissions from a byproduct of...

Repairman Shawn Flett stood 30 feet above the ground on the deck of a truck the size of a house. He had just waved it gingerly into the repair shop as if guiding an airplane into a hangar. This is a beast of a machine, with 14-foot tires and weighing in at more than a million pounds. The truck burns 50 gallons of diesel an hour as it rumbles with 400-ton loads across the giant open-pit mines that have transformed a swath of Alberta's vast northern forest into unsightly but lucrative sources of oil. "It...

If Susan E. Rice becomes Secretary of State, she might have to recuse herself from one of the first and most controversial decisions she would face: the Keystone XL oil pipeline permit. The reason: Rice and her husband are major shareholders in the pipeline company as well as a variety of Canadian companies that are involved in exploiting the oil sands region of Alberta, which would feed the Keystone XL and benefit from a new outlet. The couple owns $300,000 to $600,000 of stock in TransCanada, the pipeline firm, and they own...

ANCHORAGE — Canada may have its Albertan oil sands , and North Dakota has its Bakken oil formation . But don't count Alaska out when it comes to producing unconventional oil . Alaska, which has fallen behind North Dakota in oil output and whose Prudhoe Bay oil fields are waning, is exploring the possibility of extracting oil from the source rock on the state's North Slope. The state has leased more than half a million acres of its land to exploration companies, and even...