Alberta’s finance minister says the province’s investment into the Keystone XL pipeline project was a prudent gamble given the potential payoff in profit and jobs.
As I understand it, the pipeline was to carry Canadian crude to the United States to a refinery that would upgrade the product there and then sell the upgraded product to the rest of the world, and possibly back to Canada. This shows the United States is clearly the largest benefactor, putting hundreds of the people in the U.S. to work processing our Canadian oil.
There’s about $1.3 billion dollars of our money flushed down the drain. It would be a lot smarter to invest $1.3 billion dollars in a upgrader refinery built right here in Canada (preferably in Alberta where the oil is produced in the first place). That would upgrade the oil, putting Canadians to work, then selling the upgraded product to the rest of the world, including United States.
It makes me wonder if maybe the people that make these decisions become direct benifactors themselves.
Larry Brown, Red Deer