Earth Equity News

Hillary Clinton Says U.S. Needs Canadian ‘Dirty Oil'. By David Ebner, TorontoGlobe&Mail, 10/22/10. “The United States needs Canada’s ‘dirty oil,’ the energy-hungry country is set to concede after a raucous environmental debate that has threatened the expansion of Alberta’s oil sands. The U.S. especially needs the oil sands to keep the country’s crucial refining hub on the Gulf Coast humming, a key factor that underpins the U.S. government’s likely approval of a controversial new oil sands pipeline... But the swirling political debate appears to be near an end. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has confronted the reality of the United States’ energy situation and decided that the U.S. needs Canada’s oil sands. It might be ‘dirty oil,’ she said in a key speech last week, but supporting the flow of the oil is a necessary part of a ‘very hard balancing act’ between energy security and the pursuit of new clean energy technologies. The Gulf Coast around Houston is the largest refining hub in the U.S., but supply to the region has dwindled because output in Mexico is in decline and Venezuela is moving some of its oil elsewhere for political reasons. The difficult-to-refine oil from the oil sands is similar to the crude oil from Mexico and Venezuela.”