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On January 23, Bloomberg News reported Warren Buffett's Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF), owned by his lucrative holding company Berkshire Hathaway, stands to benefit greatly from President Barack Obama’s recent cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline. 

If built, TransCanada's Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline would carry tar sands crude, or bitumen (“dilbit”) from Alberta, B.C. down to Port Arthur, Texas, where it would be sold on the global export market. 

If not built, as revealed recently by DeSmogBlog, the grass is not necessarily greener on the other side, and could include increased levels of ecologically hazardous gas flaring in the Bakken Shale, or else many other pipeline routes moving the prized dilbit to crucial global markets.

Rail is among the most important infrastructure options for ensuring tar sands crude still moves to key global markets, and the industry is pursuing rail actively. But transporting tar sands crude via rail is in many ways a dirtier alternative to the KXL pipeline. “Railroads too present environmental issues. Moving crude on trains produces more global warming gases than a pipeline,” explained Bloomberg.

A key mover and shaker behind the push for more rail shipments is Warren Buffett, known by some as the “Oracle of Omaha” — of "Buffett Tax" fame — and the third richest man in the world, with a net worth of $39 billion. With or without Keystone XL, Warren Buffett stands to profit enormously from multiple aspects of the Alberta Tar Sands project. He also, importantly, maintains close ties with President Barack Obama.

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The fight against the Keystone XL Pipeline is heating up, with many positive and important developments occuring this past week, excluding the disgraceful, though unsurprising decision by the Obama for President 2012 campaign team to bring a former TransCanada lobbyist, Broderick Johnson (husband of NPR's Michele Norris), onto its upper-level staff.

Six main big ticket items stand out, in particular:

• A call for a U.S. State Department Office of the Inspector General probe into the Keystone XL pipeline review process by 14 U.S. Congressional members.
• A call for a special session to occur on November 1 by Nebraska Republican Governor Dave Heineman regarding pipeline safety concerns.
• A meeting between leaders of the youth climate movement and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson on the pipeline.
• A recent massive anti-pipeline action that took place in San Francisco, in which 1,000 protesters greeted Obama at one of his fundraising events for his 2012 presidential run.
• An announced push-back of the Keystone XL pipeline final decision date by the State Department. 
• An acknowledgement, at last, by President Barack Obama that he is taking into consideration the concerns voiced by citizens nationwide about the potential risks to public health, water supplies and the global climate if he approves the Keystone XL pipeline.

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On the heels of a 21-page investigative article by ​Bloomberg ​Magazine​, which covered the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Koch Brothers, Koch Industries, and its numerous subsidiaries over the past several decades, more damning news arrives about their dirty deeds in Canada.

Today, ​InsideClimate News​ reported in a story titled "Koch Subsidiary Told Regulators It Has 'Direct and Substantial Interest' in Keystone XL", that contrary to the narrative the Kochs have been dishing out to the U.S. government, Koch Industries has a huge fiscal stake in both the Keystone XL Pipeline and in Tar Sands production more generally. 

​Inside Climate reports:

​In 2009, Flint Hills Resources Canada LP, an Alberta-based subsidiary of Koch Industries, applied for—and won— 'intervenor status' in the National Energy Board hearings that led to Canada's 2010 approval of its 327-mile portion of the pipeline. The controversial project would carry heavy crude 1,700 miles from Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast.

In the form it submitted to the Energy Board, Flint Hills wrote that it "is among Canada's largest crude oil purchasers, shippers and exporters. Consequently, Flint Hills has a direct and substantial interest in the application" for the pipeline under consideration.

To be approved as an intervenor, Flint Hills had to have some degree of "business interest" in Keystone XL, Carole Léger-Kubeczek, a National Energy Board spokeswoman, told InsideClimate News. Intervenors are granted the highest level of access in hearings, with the option to ask questions. The Energy Board approved Canada's segment of the pipeline with little opposition, and Flint Hills did not exercise its right to speak.

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Recently, a debate among environmental advocates over global warming strategy has spilled out into the public arena, apparently triggered by signals from Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Ca), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, that she will try to move a bill to address global warming this year.

(For more details, see this recent story in the LA Times.)

The bill in question, the bipartisan Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, would ratchet down U.S. emissions by something on the order of 70 percent by the year 2050.

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On the same day Hilary Clinton released her plan to reduce the US addiction to foreign oil imports and significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the CEO of the largest oil company in the world is balking at the pursuit for energy independence.

Rex Tillerson, chairman and chief executive of Exxon Mobil, has hit out at "isolationism" in energy policy (full article is firewalled) arguing that attempts to pursue energy independence are futile and counter-productive.

Tillerson stated that:

Regardless, no conceivable combination of demand moderation or domestic supply development can realistically close the gap and eliminate Americans' need for imports."

His remarks, made at the World Energy Congress in Rome, provided support for calls from Opec, the oil producers' cartel, for what the group calls "security of demand".

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Presidential hopeful Hilary Clinton has just released an aggressive and comprehensive plan to fight climate change and significantly curb the US addiction to foreign oil.

The plan called "Powering America's Future: Hillary Clinton's Plan to Address the Energy and Climate Crisis" proposes to:

• Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80% from 1990 levels by 2050 — the level necessary to avoid the worst impacts of global warming.
• Cut foreign oil imports by two-thirds from projected levels by 2030.
• Transform our carbon-based economy into an efficient green economy, creating at least 5 million jobs from clean energy over the next decade.

Grist lays out the entire plan here.