Keystone capers
The hoopla about the Keystone XL Pipeline would be much easier understood by John Q. Public if it were renamed the Koch Industries (and Campaign Funds) Pipeline.
That's because Koch Industries, the privately owned cornerstone of the fortune amassed by the conservative brothers Charles and David Koch, holds leases on 1.1 million acres -- a Delaware-sized plot -- in Canada's immense tar sands from which the Keystone Pipeline would carry the planet's dirtiest oil through the heart of America, over our largest fresh-water aquifer and southward to oil refineries on the Gulf. The Kochs, or course, also have investment interests in many refineries from Minnesota to Texas.
Refineries, in general, also have quite an interest in the Keystone. Most were built decades ago to refine the millions of barrels of Middle East crude oil that we used to import, back when cars would only go about eight miles on a gallon of gas and before efficiency standards and hydraulic fracturing turned America into more of an oil exporter than importer. But the refineries were built to handle that heavy foreign oil. What we now produce and use domestically, as well as export, is much different stuff.
So now that we are no longer dependent on the heavy foreign oil (importing only about a fourth of what we use), the Gulf Coast refineries are slowed. But refineries cannot run at half time, according to Dr. Tad Patzek, chairman of the University of Texas department of petroleum and geosystems engineering. They have to run full-time, at 100 percent capacity. So these refineries are importing oil in order to run at capacity, then they export finished products like gasoline, lubricants and so on, Patzek said. They need the Canadian oil for supply stock.
If built, the completed pipeline -- which garnered 252 "yes" votes to 161 "no" votes in the Republican majority U.S. House of Representatives on Friday -- would employ only about 50 people. It's main function would be to move the Canadian oil (and Koch investment) across the country and to Gulf refineries (more Koch investments). (No Republicans opposed the pipeline, by the way. Among House Democrats, 161 opposed the pipeline and 31 supported it.)
The pipeline, if it happens, will come, in part, on our dime. The refineries linked to Keystone as committing shippers will receive between $1 billion and $1.8 billion in tax breaks. So much for free market principles.
Along the way, the Keystone will have lined more than a few conservative campaign war chests and resulted in 14 percent to 20 percent more greenhouse gas emissions in its extraction and processing than any of the oil typically consumed in the U.S. at present.
Isn't cronyism amazing? We'll see how this measure plays out in the Senate next week.
Alexander steps up for Ebola vaccine
On Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who was quick to criticize the president for not having "a greater sense of urgency" about Ebola and who called for travel restrictions to and from nations in West Africa, has now joined with Democrat Sen. Tom Harkin, (D-Iowa), and several other bipartisan supporters to introduce a bill to incentivize the development of treatments and vaccines for Ebola.
The Harkin-Alexander bill would add the disease to the Food and Drug Administration's priority review voucher program, an initiative designed to help speed the development of new drugs for neglected tropical diseases.
Harkin is the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and Alexander is a ranking member.
"This bill will help fight Ebola with a tool that encourages the development of necessary vaccines and drugs with little to no market in the United States -- offering a reward to innovators who invest the time and resources to develop vaccines and drugs to treat, and hopefully cure, Ebola," Alexander said in a statement Wednesday.
Hats off to Sen. Alexander for putting his effort where his mouth has been.