There has been a lot of press recently about the Keystone XL Pipeline Project. President Obama has rejected the plan for now, to allow time for more thorough environmental review. But the economics of the project are also in need of study…

…Transcanada, the pipeline developer, says it needs this line to significantly increase its ability to move Canadian oil to U.S. refineries and markets. Doing so, supporters say, would stabilize prices, increase national security by having this supply line in place and create more than 100,000 high-paying jobs.

Let’s look at the rest of the story:

The pipeline now moving through our political process is actually one of four phases to Transcanada’s Keystone XL Project…

…When you put all phases of this project together, what do you have? A direct, major pipeline from the Canadian oil resource to refineries and international shipping services.

Without this pipeline, Canadian oil is available primarily to the North American market. So without the completed pipeline, Canadian oil does provide us some security and price stability.

However, if the pipeline is completed to Houston, that oil will be available to the international market, where the highest bidder gets the oil and those buying and selling have no regard for U.S. security or price stability…