March 17, 2012 03:51 PM UTC

Does Cory Gardner Want to Raise your Gas Prices?

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• by: ClubTwitty

SUNDAY POLS UPDATE: here’s Rep. Cory Gardner’s full Weekly Republican Address:

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Cory Gardner is doing the bidding of his constituents.  No, not the taxpayers and consumers that populate his district–his real constituents: Big Oil.  From The Hill:

“People in my district and around the country are fed up with the way the president is handling this issue, and rightfully so. The most forceful thing the president has done about high gas prices is try to explain that he’s against them. Americans are right to expect more from their leaders,” the Colorado Republican said.

Apparently, people should expect more from folks like Mr. Gardner in helping Big Oil take more hard-earned cash from Coloradans’ pockets as prices go up.  

Or as Mr. Gardner’s cash constituents like to phrase it ‘stabilize.’  That’s because with completion of the Keystone, Coloradans will likely see gas prices increase.  That’s good for Mr. Gardner’s funders, but bad for the people that live in Colorado’s 4th.

Mr. Gardner’s not alone pimping for Big Oil and the Canadians, of course.  It is, rather, de rigueur for these day’s GOP candidates.  My congressman, Scott Tipton, is up to much the same.  Rep. Gardner, however, probably knows better.  

One industry source (Colorado Energy News–“The business, technology and politics of Colorado’s energy industry”) puts it this way:

Keystone Pipeline Could Raise – Not Lower –

Gas Prices in Colorado and Wyoming

TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL oil pipeline, a project backers … say will create cheaper U.S. gasoline, instead risks raising prices as much as 20 cents a gallon in the Midwest, Great Plains and Rocky Mountains.

The line would create a new way to carry Canadian imports outside the Midwest and reduce an oil surplus that’s depressing prices in the central U.S. …

“The Canadian plan was to use their market power to raise prices in the United States (UNG) and get more money from consumers,” Philip Verleger, founder of Colorado-based energy consulting firm PK Verleger LLC, said in an interview.

This article is based on a report from that notorious left-wing rag the Bloomberg Business Report:

Producers including Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), Suncor Energy Inc. (SU) and Cenovus Energy Inc. (CVE) may reap as much as $4 billion more in annual revenue if prices rise as expected following the construction of the 1,661-mile (2,673-kilometer) Keystone XL conduit, the 2010 report says.

And that…

Keystone XL might lower the average cost of gasoline across the U.S. by up to 4 cents a gallon, Ray Perryman, a consultant hired by TransCanada to assess the economic impact of the project, said in an e-mail.

The net impact of Keystone XL on gasoline prices would be minimal, said Perryman, whose research has been cited by TransCanada to back up claims on potential job growth and market impacts from the pipeline.

Consumers in Colorado and Wyoming currently pay less for gasoline than anywhere in the nation because of the supply glut in the Rocky Mountains caused by stranded Canadian imports and growing oil production from onshore fields.

So when Reps. Garder or Tipton are stumping about promising economic gain from doing Big Oil’s bidding…the Colorado observer might ask: who’s gain?  Because it is unlikely to be the Colorado consumer.