Reuters analysis: Winners on Keystone? No one, really

Robert Campbell is a New York-based market analyst for Thomson Reuters. His analysis of the Obama decision to nix the Keystone XL pipeline based on its current route seems quite sensible to me. A chunk that stands out:

“…even by blocking Keystone XL, the Obama administration has done nothing to prevent a huge increase in oil sands crude entering the U.S. over the next five years. Indeed, that oil will come on pipelines that are already built and permitted as noted above.

In a sense the Obama administration has tacitly accepted oil sands crude as a fact of life in the United States and has acquiesced to its gaining an increased market share.

For environmentalists celebrating the demise of Keystone XL, but there’s an excellent chance they’ll go home from the party in a vehicle fueled by oil sands crude.

So what is the real lesson here? Well, there are remarkable parallels with the current debate over hydraulic fracturing.

As with the fracking issue, the Keystone XL issue showed the oil industry once again demonstrating its unparalleled, almost obtuse inability to gauge public sentiment get out in front of an issue.

Read the rest here: TD Waterhouse: Markets > News & Commentary.