that is by far the most direct route: sludge, refine on west coast of CA, ship to china.
Big mountain in the way. Most of the pipeline is already built. The capacity through the lower half of the US has been doubled.
It would be wonderful if the BRITISH COLUMBIA government would allow even the pipeline to carry crude to the port to go ahead. But BC is our California. An extra ship a day carrying the oil is soooow bad. It might hit a whale. Ignoring that Vancouver is a port and cargo ships come and go. They were against adding another pipeline, the Alberta government decided to put off sending gas through the existing pipeline, all of a sudden gas prices went up in BC and they were yelling that Alberta was holding them hostage.
Sure, it is ok to be environmentalists until you can not fill up your tank and drive to work. The problem with something like a pipeline is you can get 99% of the people on board but the 1% ends up having a veto power. And that is where it comes down to.
Irving pipeline, canceled 2017. A lot of finger pointing. Basically it was the Irvings wanting someone else to pay for the project.