Tubes, Tunnels, Pipelines And Progress

The Dakota Access Pipeline that triggered the resistance of the Indians, or Native Americans as some of them want to be called, is nearly complete and ready to take oil to the refineries. The Keystone XL Pipeline project, which endured an on-again, off-again status during the Obama years, is on again. It’s a new day for energy in America.

Soot-stained skies are largely a thing of the past, with tubes and tunnels transporting more and more oil beneath the surface of the land, and barely imagined wonders are soon on the way. Elon Musk, the visionary founder of SpaceX and the Tesla electric automobile, is experimenting with a transportation system that would send a bulletlike passenger pod speeding through a vacuum tube called a hyperloop at speeds of 600 miles an hour. A model is being tested now in the Nevada desert.

Mr. Musk is currently boring an enormous tunnel beneath the streets of Los Angeles, near his Space X headquarters, as part of a hyperloop system and a roadway to enable cars to escape traffic-choked streets above. But all that is in the future. Energy for the present lies in the pipelines.

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