South Portland's tar sands ban not significant, experts say
South Portland’s vote to ban the flow of so-called tar sands crude oil may have been a victory in the eyes of environmentalists, but some oil industry experts are saying the move is not significant because there are other means to transport oil to the East Coast.
David McColl, a securities analyst with investment research company Morningstar, told InsideClimateNews.org that the South Portland City’s Council vote is “almost meaningless.”
For one, he said, the 236-mile pipeline owned by Portland Pipe Line Co. that currently sends crude oil from South Portland to Montreal would have too small of a capacity for it to make sense to reverse its flow and send oil to Maine. It also wouldn’t make sense, he added, because it would then have to ship the oil to refineries elsewhere.
Furthermore, McColl said, TransCanada, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline, is planning to connect existing and new pipelines to create a structure with a much larger capacity that would ship oil from Alberta to New Brunswick.
Other experts, including Phil Flynn and Tom Kloza, oil analysts at Price Futures Group and GasBuddy.com, respectively, said when one option closes up for the oil industry — as it has in South Portland — another opportunity will become clear, including the possibility of using more trains to transport oil to the East Coast.
Though the oil industry will have other options to transport oil eastbound, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council’s International program told InsideClimateNews.org that working on other options will be no easy task.
Read more
South Portland enacts crude oil ban
S. Portland may seek help from environmentalists
Most Recent
Most Recent
Comments