What about the high likelyhood of huge and irrepairable environmental damage that may result from some aspect of this project?  Is this not of "national importance"?  It is pretty much inevitable that over time, this will occur for a high risk project like this.  There is no way to clean this nasty product up.  Nope, it isn't oil in the conventional sense! Given the silt in the river, the bitumen will sink when the spill occurs.  This is proven.  As if that weren't enough to shelve the project, there is no long term market for this low grade product.  The extra dollar or two per barrel that might be obtained breifly shipping by pipeline versus rail is not worth the risk.  Due to the coming lower demand for fossil fuels in general, "flooding" of the world market with this low grade heavy crude will only serve to drive its price down, so ironically, the price may end up even lower than what would be obtained by shipping it by rail.  Please stop this project and all this nonsense!!