The protesters have every right to display their ignorance about the pipeline. If they want to show the entire world just how ignorant they are, they should be encouraged to do so.

If there is an antichrist, they are it.

They're paid to teach, period!

Yes, where is someone that can make a grand speech that wows the idiots listening.

IIRC the pellets are made from compressed saw dust.

And investing long on oil futures...

I know.. its hilarious... no perceivable impact, and they would rather buy oil from people in the middle east & Venezuela & Mexico that don't like us very much, compared to easily-accessible cheap oil from one of our closest allies and a very stable friend... (Canada).

I want to see them plow their 10,000 acre corn farms with a horse and on foot.

The usual suspects are at it again.

Doesn't take a stretch to imagine that there are more risks to sending it on train cars (dripping all over as they do) versus sending through an underground pipeline.

I hope they aren't using any fuels to stay warm. I would agree to wood, but that damn carbon footprint would be so wrong.

Many use wood pellets in the midwest... but it takes some heavy machinery to grind the wood into pea-sized pellets...

You should see the protest at the California state capital every time there is going to be a 50 cent cut to some student program. "Somehow" 5,000 teachers show up bringing their entire classrooms with them, and every special-needs kid they can find is pushed out in a wheel chair like a mascot. There is an easy fix for that... if they are not in the classroom teaching, and they are not on leave with a substitute in place, they are fired.

And even if we did go back to stone age ways it wouldn't make a degree's worth of difference to the climate.

I think it is actually a combination of NIMBYs and environmentalists... I don't think anyone in Nebraska gave a hoot about whatever beetle it was that will be impacted, but suddenly its the poster-child for the anti-industrial movement.

I know... they don't like tar sands because it is "thick dirty oil"... ok... what do you think diesel is made out of for their tractors & F250 pickups? Or ocean going cargo vessels that haul the crap from China to sell to them in Walmart, or heating oil in the northeast... that's kind of what that sludge is used for. Then in the same stroke they are all complaining about the high cost of fuel oil with the cold winter in the northeast. Whatever. Suck it up, you can't have it both ways.

All those that oppose this pipeline should no longer buy gas or diesel or they are hypocrites. Let them ride horses.

It's just the height of NIMBYism.. there are well-north of 4,000 crude oil pipelines in the country, and10's of thousands of natural gas pipelines. They sure seem to like to drive their cars slow on those country roads... and they even had government subsidies to sell their corn for ridiculous prices to ethanol plants for a few years (that ended and that's probably part of why the same people are whining). If they don't want off-shore drilling, the same tree-huggers don't want windmills off the shore of Nantucket to disrupt their ocean views either... So what exactly are they willing to contribute to society? We have the same problem here in California... whine & complain about hydro dams, but its fine if we buy power from Canada (which produces it with hydro dams and we lose a huge amount in transmission and we pay 3 or 4 times higher than we need to)... $500 power bills are pretty much the standard in California, I know a lot of people with monthly bills in the thousands...

Almost all property has easements.... do you have electricity? Yes, you have an easement. Cable? water & sewer? I have a 48 inch sewer pipe running through the backyard, the only time I really even think about it is when I decide to drain the pool & change the water, there is a manhole cover kind of in the middle of nowhere in the back of my 1 acre backyard. I run the hose out there from the submersible pump & presto... instant place to get rid of 35,000 gallons of water without flooding out the neighborhood...

When you have no rational argument to put forth, all you have left is name-calling and coercion.

These wacko extreme environmentalist have no idea that without energy, we would be living back in the cave age. They probably love their cars, their big houses, the many things produced from oil, but have no idea what powers a modern world. Their politics of hate for hydrocarbon goes far beyond reason and science. They are truly the antichrist!

I'm working in an oilsands project which alone is slated to start producing 110,000 barrels per day by 2015. Devon, Meg Energy, CNRL, Conoco Phillips, Statoil, and others all have smaller projects using SAGD technology which is very efficient and economical to extract bitumen, and more environmentally friendly than strip mining. The amount of oil shipping from here is really in its infancy.

The talk here is if the XL pipeline doesn’t go through, a large amount of the oil will be shipped west to Japan/China. If it doesn’t ship south, it WILL ship elsewhere.

I’m also invested in a smaller private company which will produce 30,000 barrels per day with enough reserves to carry through 2038. Because of uncertainties with pipeline capacities and up-front infrastructure costs, their current business plan is to ship all of the oil by rail at an anticipated cost of $30 per barrel. Approval of XL would likely change that plan and provide cheaper oil to the market.

Brilliant!