Still a lot of talk about the Keystone Pipeline. I see oil today is a $47 a barrel. That is over $30 a barrel less than is required to make the Alberta tar sands economical which is why any new projects have been cancelled and why production at existing projects is slowly being shut down. The result is the Keystone pipeline is now effectively irrelevant. The oil price is not expected to improve in the next year and probably longer. I see that the conservative prime minister, Harper, has called for new elections in October and I assume it’s because he hopes the resulting economic setback won’t be obvious to voters by then.
This will also have a very negative impact on the fracking in the Baken shale in North Dakota and Montana which means the economic miracle in those states will be winding down. Anything less than $60 a barrel makes it impossible for companies to get bank loans. Both states will soon have a lot of unemployed oil workers.
King coal is all but dead. It can longer compete with natural gas or even solar and wind. Attempts have been made to open coal export terminals on the West Coast so coal can be shipped to China. So far local activists had been able to stop those efforts and even China realizes it must wean itself from coal. Some coal will still be needed to make steel but it’s source as an electricity generator is over.