TransCanada Re-submit their Keystone XL Permit Application

CALGARY — TransCanada Corp.’s bid to funnel Alberta crude oil east to Quebec refineries and potentially to Canada’s busiest oil port opens the door to new markets for oil sands producers beyond those promised by the long-delayed Keystone XL project.

CALGARY, Alberta — Alberta could offer up new environmental initiatives for oil sands development to show the Obama administration that approving a US$5.3-billion pipeline to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries will not increase pollution, the Canadian province’s new envoy in Washington said on Monday.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada is pressing the U.S. on every diplomatic level to approve TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline. “We are doing that at every level of the government and in coordination with the province of Alberta and others,” Harper said at an even in Calgary. “We really do have a Team Canada approach to this.”

The Canadian province of Alberta is stepping up its efforts to promote the Keystone XL pipeline project, hiring two U.S. advocacy firms with ties to Secretary of State John Kerry. The province’s top elected official, Premier Alison Redford, is scheduled to spend part of this week in Washington to give a speech and to “meet with several legislators and administration officials on both sides of the Keystone debate,” her office said in a press release announcing the trip, her fourth to Washington in 18 months.

CALGARY — TransCanada Corp. plans to spend $900-million on a new pipeline connecting two Alberta oil hubs as well as a 1.9-million-barrel terminal in an industrial area north of Edmonton. The Heartland pipeline will run 200 kilometres between the Edmonton region and Hardisty, Alta., the start point of its Keystone system. It could ultimately transport 900,000 barrels of crude per day.

The Keystone XL pipeline would increase greenhouse-gas emissions by the equivalent of 46 coal-fired power plants or 34 million vehicles, groups fighting the project said in a report. There is a climate impact from burning 830,000 barrels per day of any crude that cannot be ignored

A new front may soon open in the battle over pipelines that transport Canadian oil to the U.S. And this one involves a line that would carry even more oil derived from Alberta’s tar sands than TransCanada Corp.’s proposed Keystone XL, a project that has inflamed environmentalists who say it would exacerbate climate change. The public doesn’t seem to have the same sort of attention for pipeline expansions as they do for pipeline construction. But we’re talking about a lot of crude

A labor dispute between Canada and its diplomats will hinder government efforts to lobby the U.S. for approval of TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline, the head of the foreign-service workers’ union said. Federal diplomats are working no more than the 7.5 hours per day required by their contracts and not answering e-mails or phone calls after 5 p.m., said Tim Edwards, president of the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers.