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Originally Posted by MonctonRad
The pipeline would not be the economic saviour of Saint John.
I still support the concept though, primarily because it rots my socks that we are dependent on oil imports on the east coast, despite the fact that Canada has one of the largest oil reserves in the world. I would be much happier giving my business to Alberta that to a corrupt Saudi prince.
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Seems to me it was a project that should've actually been presented in the late 90's / early 2000's. They were 10 years behind the ball and missed their window.
I think it would have been great to refine Canadian oil. However, this pipeline was never about that. It was always to be foremost an export pipeline, and needs to be looked at as such. To build support for it, the benefits were touted to be of nation-building scale, and therefore it invited nation-wide scrutiny.
It is not some sort of energy independence/security project, and will never provide the wide-scale job growth that is often thrown around. Yes, there would be a jump in job-growth during construction in pockets of the country, but anything that uses "man-hours" as its measure of how many jobs will be created is generally not a large-scale job creator over the medium to long-term.
Most importantly though, Canadian refiners don't appear to have any intention of refining Alberta crude. Irvings themselves said they would still be importing from abroad as the economics of their tanker imports are too good. Unless they get some sort of incentive to refine it (ie. a government subsidy / tax break / rebate) the only time the Irvings would be touching it, is when they are exporting it. The Irvings whole interest in it was for export purposes (they could fill empty tankers with Canadian oil after importing Saudi oil).
https://business.financialpost.com/c...ast-goes-ahead
If a Canadian refiner (ie Irving) was going to be refining it without government support (either in the form of rule/law changes or in monetary incentives) then I would be for it... But I see the window on it as being fulling shut.