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Obviously the market isn’t waiting for the regulators to catch up with their decision… They are moving the oil now

And that’s the irony: U.S. Bakken producers who haven’t been able get a ‘yes’ from their own government on Keystone XL — which would help them get 100,000 barrels a day of their own oil from the Bakken tight-oil formation to tidewater — are now signing up to move their oil in a pipeline through Canada.

In a conference call, TransCanada president and CEO Russ Girling said his company is responding to demand from U.S. producers that are currently forced to move their oil by rail and want a safer and more efficient alternative as soon as possible.

Mr. Girling said he hoped obtaining U.S. State Department regulatory approval for Upland would not take as long as it is taking for Keystone XL.

“This has been an extraordinarily difficult process,” Mr. Girling said, referring to Keystone. “Our historic experience of gaining approval across the border has been 24 months. This particular one has taken six-and-a-half years. I hope that is anomaly in Canada/U.S. trade of energy.

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“Obviously the market isn’t waiting for the regulators to catch up with their decision,” he said. “They are moving the oil now.”

The Upland proposal complicates matters for the U.S. President, who is no fan of oil pipelines and has vowed to veto Keystone legislation, which passed final approval in the U.S. Congress this week.

President Obama has said he wants a decision on KXL to be made by the State Department, which has final say because the pipeline crosses the border. It continues to study the pipeline.