Keystone Seen Failing to Sop Up Canada Oil Glut

Even if U.S. President Barack Obama approves the Keystone XL pipeline, Canadian crude oil probably will remain the cheapest in the world, hampering expansion of the country’s largest export industry.

Canadian oil prices are forecast to fall compared with world benchmarks because production from oil sands, fields of sand coated with heavy oil beneath about 90,000 square kilometers (34,749 square miles) of boreal forest in northern Alberta, is estimated to more than double to 3.8 million barrels a day by 2022. Keystone, the 1,179-mile link from Alberta to Nebraska first proposed in 2008 and delayed in part by environmental activists, would only briefly relieve the glut.