"it will be decades before we'd need a Trans Mountain pipe in the most optimistic forecast"....  No doubt your depth of petro industry wisdom is propelled by the requisite cost/benefit forecasts, repeated many times by Kinder Morgan's CFO and staff.  Did you look those over?  I'm sure the various external banking analysts, with decades of industry knowledge, are telling legions of shareholders that KM is about engage is a vast waste of their money.  Yes, this is why KM filed for an IPO in april this year, so they could waste vast sums of shareholders' money on a $7 billion project.   What silliness you spew. 

BitBalls may indeed prove useful, but they will be transported via rail.  BiTballs require energy intensive solvent extraction and air insertion to constitute them and make the pellets float.  The production process, with added cost+risk of solvent reconstitution and rail transport, may be no better than pipe which is generally very safe.