The pipeline blunder, in particular, is inexplicable. There quite literally is no rational explanation for the decision
Until you realize Warren Buffett profits mightily from his trains transporting oil and coal.
dcinsider.com
Warren Buffett’s Railroad Increases Capacity For Coal Shipping
February 1, 2012 7:45 pmBy: DC Insider
 Editor’s Note: Obama donor, supporter and favorite Warren Buffett announced today that his company would be increasing coal shipping capacity. It has been recently reported that Buffett’s railroad company, Burlington Northern, will likely benefit from the blocking of the XL Keystone pipeline by Obama. With the oil pipeline blocked, that oil would be transported on railroad cars.
Bloomberg News: Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A) plans to boost capital spending at its railroad to $3.9 billion this year, an increase of 11 percent from 2011, as the company adds capacity for coal shipments.
The 2012 proposal includes $2.1 billion on the core network and $1.1 billion on locomotive, freight car and equipment acquisitions, the BNSF Railway Co. said in a statement today. The Fort Worth, Texas-based unit is also spending $300 million this year on a U.S. rail-safety mandate.
The largest U.S. freight railroads may lift capital expenditures to a record $13 billion in 2012 as their revenue rises amid gains in freight traffic, the Association of American Railroads said Jan. 30. BNSF’s weekly volume climbed to a three- year high as the economy improved outside of the housing market, Buffett, Berkshire’s chairman and chief executive officer, said in October.
“That’s stuff moving around the country, supplying merchants and doing all kinds of things,” he said at Fortune magazine’s Most Powerful Women conference.
The railroad’s plan calls for $400 million in terminal, intermodal-expansion and efficiency projects, which will focus on coal routes. The rail serves mines in the Western U.S., including Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, which holds the largest and cheapest U.S. reserves of the power-plant fuel. |
