Jeb passes Rubio as oil drops to $8.35

Shocker! We have been hearing for some weeks that the GOP establishment will mount a last ditch effort to stop Trump in South Carolina. Good luck on that but the establishment has found some stroke. An Augusta Chronicle poll of 683 registered Republicans puts Jeb Bush in third place ahead of Marco Rubio. The top five are;

Trump	32%
Cruz	18%
Bush	13%
Rubio	11%
Carson	9%

In an entirely unrelated matter but on a subject of interest to me the price of oil has dropped to $8 a barrel, Canadian oil that is. Specifically I'm referring to bitumen, the tar sands oil that is traded on the Alberta Exchange. Friday it closed at $8.35. Bitumen is cheaper than most other types of crude, because it has to be diluted with more-expensive lighter petroleum, and then transported thousands of miles from Alberta to refineries on the Gulf coast. Since most of the spending for bitumen extraction comes up front, and thus is a sunk cost, production will continue and grow. Canada will need more pipeline capacity to transport bitumen out of Alberta by 2019 so pressure to build the Keystone pipeline will not abate.