Is Keystone Still Needed to Transport U.S. Oil?

[Geee]

National Journal:

WILLISTON, N.D.—One of the earliest and biggest political selling points of the Keystone XL pipeline was that it would not just bring Canadian oil sands to market but also oil from North Dakota and Montana.

But that was back in 2010, and things are moving fast in the heart of America's oil boom—fast enough that some question whether the Keystone XL pipeline is necessary at all around here.

At least one key oil executive says the pipeline is no longer needed to bring to market crude oil from the region's Bakken shale formation, where oil output has exploded in the past five years, thanks to the combination of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling.

"It's not critical any longer," said Harold Hamm, founder and CEO of Continental Resources, an independent oil company that had the earliest—and still largest—footprint in the Bakken at 11 percent. "They just waited too long. The industry is very innovative, and it finds other ways of doing it and other routes."

TransCanada, the company seeking to build the 1,700-mile, Alberta-to-Texas pipeline, first applied for the necessary presidential permit in September 2008. In 2010, the company announced it was going to add an on-ramp to pick up Bakken oil in Eastern Montana. Over the past three years, growing environmental and climate-change concerns have delayed the project.