Interesting story - and good for the rail business

If the information that demand for tank cars has outstripped production is true, not just railroads but companies who supply them will be booming as well.  (Interesting that, at one point in the story, the journalist was talking tank cars while the video showed clips of cylindrical hoppers!)

Canada = Supplier.

sorry to nitpick but this is incorrect.

Canada is the United States largest supplier of oil...

"Many aren't aware how self

"Many aren't aware how self sufficient the States are soon to become with their own oil, but it is happening and its happening soon. "

Don't believe the hype.  The US peaked as an oil-producing nation way back in 1972.  The US could never produce internally the 20+ million-barrels-a-day that it needs to maintain the current lifestyle, much less grow the economy every year.  The US will always need to import oil, and that is going to be more and more difficult as the rest of the world peaks in production (Saudi Arabia probably peaked in 2006) and countries are less able to export their oil to the states.

There's a reason why China is investing so heavily in the oil sands (which is already becoming an environmental disaster by the way).

Just sayin'.

On the surface of a planet

On the surface of a planet where our numbers are progressing geometrically, and where the concomitant rise in energy needs is self-evident, and where we will continue to need hand-wielded implements and fasteners, transportation, power generation, and services for people with all kinds of means, poor and rich alike, you can be very certain we'll not be worried about any environmental disaster growing at the oil sands site.  I predict that we'll soon be looking for more tar sands to develop.  Fracking is the latest and greatest, but it obviously comes with a cost.  So will solar and wind generation plants.  I wonder what will happen to our atmosphere as we take more an more energy from it with wind turbines scattered in large forests.   Birds will just have to go around.

If you say we should turn to large wind turbine farms, how would those be built, maintained, replaced...?  You'll still need huge amounts of energy to build them, and the large vanes need replacing every four or five years...more industry with all the organic materials that go into their shapes and surfaces.  Solar panel arrays...hectares of them?  Same thing...energy and materials, and that means both extraction and transport.  For more and more of us, and next year even more. 

The tar sands are just the first indication of where we are going.  It's about to get a lot worse.

OK, I think this is going political

and can't end well.  

Going Political...

I agree!  My only question is, are you referring specifically to this thread or the world we live in?

Lets stay on topic about the

Lets stay on topic about the railroad, this isn't a thread to save the planet.  Here is one article that talks about the oil I mentioned in my first post:

http://www.thenational.ae/business/energy/a-new-us-oil-rush-could-rock-opec