I applaud Dennis Shore’s passion and interest in the high gas prices we are enduring as he expressed in his editorial published in the March 10 Altoona Mirror.

I write this letter in response to clear up what the Keystone XL pipeline would carry from Canada to the US refineries.

It wouldn’t be bringing “tar sands, a thick sludge of oil and sand” as Shore purported.

I have had the opportunity to work with Canadian oil sands producers since 1994 as a mining consultant, so I have first-hand familiarity with the industry, their process and what their final product is, which is high quality synthetic crude oil.

Oil sands (tar sands) is a mixture of sand, bitumen, clay and water.

This material is either mined or extracted in situ depending on its depth below ground.

The bitumen is separated on site through an extraction process, which can be either a hot water or cold chemical process. The sand, clay and water are pumped back into the open pit.

The bitumen is heated and further processed into synthetic crude oil, which is shipped to refineries across North America to be refined further into jet fuel, gasoline, and other petroleum products.

Because of its high quality, Canadian synthetic crude oil, aka Sweet Crude Oil, is the cheapest to refine into any petroleum product, unlike much of the oil that comes from the middle east aka Sour Crude Oil, which costs more to refine.

Oil producers like metal producers are at the mercy of market forces. They do not set the price of their products, the market does.

The market doesn’t like instability, i.e., Russian invading Ukraine and so prices reflect the instability in the world. This is the same with gold, silver, platinum, copper, nickel, etc.

As an aside, nickel prices recently spiked very high as about 25% of the world’s nickel is produced by Russia.

Government energy policy plays a significant role.

While the Biden administration says there are 9,000 leases that oil companies can use to produce oil, this is just part of the equation.

Government permits for drilling, on site facilities and pipelines to transport the oil from a remote plot of government land is also necessary and these take years to obtain.

Additionally, government policy also heavily influences bank policy and risk mitigation.

Banks are increasingly unwilling to invest in fossil fuel projects and have been divesting in these projects due to government energy policy.

William A. Wilkinson

Altoona