line 9 goes through the state of michigan (allowing the americans to block the line in case of sanctions or war against china) and has a proposed terminal in portland, maine - giving them ultimate control over exports.

http://www.thestar.com/business/2014/06/13/if_keystone_gets_nixed_canadian_pipeline_operators_have_a_plan_b_olive.html

this is about the americans controlling the supply, and harper being stuck in a tug-of-war between chinese buyers wanting to control it and the americans seeing that as a security threat.

for a long time, i was worried that harper was giving in to those chinese interests and possibly putting western canada under threat of american occupation.

thankfully, he seems to have stepped back from the brink.

if he wanted the western pipelines built, he wouldn't have approved them with hundreds of conditions.

it's going to be decades before anything gets done, and by then the other lines will be operational. it's not worth the cost. they won't be built.

but, what harper can do now is go to his chinese investors and say his hands are tied. which is true. it's just that they're not tied by regulators, they're tied by the americans.

the oil is already pumping south through the keystone. if obama doesn't approve the wider pipe, his successor will. it's a matter of time.

in the mean time, the line 9 will ship it through michigan and out to maine.

it's all about controlling the oil supply. we know that this is what the americans spend billions on their military to do, but we think of ourselves as special.

there's nothing more obvious than that the americans will insist they are in control. and it seems to be that what that means is having the oil pumped through their borders.

so, keystone is allowed because it goes through the us. line 9 is allowed because it goes through the us. the western pipelines get drowned in bureaucracy because they don't go through the us. and the chinese get stuck with an unstable investment.

that's the cost of doing business in the shadow of the elephant.

and it has nothing to do with ecological concerns.