Uh, no?

[thewayne]

"Every barrel of oil that comes out of those sands in Canada is a barrel of oil that we don't have to buy from a foreign source."
— Gov. Rick Perry

"Sand oil" is called that because it comes from a special type of sand and requires a lot of additional processing before it gets to the crude state, where the normal refining process can begin. It ain't a 1:1 replacement. I especially love the number of jobs that Republicans are claiming the pipeline will create. I guess a candidate's true job is to tell the people what they want to hear, who cares if it's accurate. Wikipedia has a good description: Making liquid fuels from oil sands requires energy for steam injection and refining. This process generates two to four times the amount of greenhouse gases per barrel of final product as the "production" of conventional oil.[3] If combustion of the final products is included, the so-called "Well to Wheels" approach, oil sands extraction, upgrade and use emits 10 to 45% more greenhouse gases than conventional crude.[4] They actually describe the extraction process as mining, not drilling/pumping. So the only thing that might make it cheaper than OPEC oil is lower transport costs.

Comments

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

Also, Canada is foreign. It might not be from over sees, but it is a foreign country.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Excellent point. They're not OPEC, but they are definitely foreign.

[moiraj.livejournal.com]

The whole idea of the oil process is dicey, but yeah, what jumped out at me was that he doesn't realize Canada is a foreign country. He does know we're not the 51st state, doesn't he?

[silveradept]

Other than the obvious "Hey! Canada is quite foreign, despite the Harper government!" retort, shouldn't he be shouting "Drill, Baby, Drill!" instead of advocating for a pipeline that will take tar sands oil and ship it somewhere?