Opponents To Keystone XL Delayed The Pipeline But Lost The Battle Against Canadian Oils Sands Fracking And Increased US Oil Production

From Bloomberg, "Keystone Pipe Vote Tackles Questions History Answered" by Jim Snyder and Jeremy van Loon:

The 830,000 barrels per day Keystone would carry have found other paths to the U.S. Cross-border pipelines such as Enbridge Inc.’s Alberta Clipper are considering expansion. By next year, Alberta, home to the Canadian oil sands, will have built about 700,000 barrels a day of rail capacity from almost nothing a few years ago, said Patrick Kenny, an analyst at National Bank Financial in Calgary.

“A lot of work has been done to backfill the capacity that Keystone XL was supposed to represent,” Kenny said. “Keystone would have been a ‘must-have’ without all the crude-by-rail that has come on in the last couple of years.”

U.S. production, meanwhile, is booming. In 2008, wells were pumping out around 5 million barrels a day. By August, that had risen to more than 8.6 million barrels, more than a 70 percent jump, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.