A sign in front of TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline facilities in Hardisty, Alberta, Canada. “The black snake – Keystone XL – has been defeated, and best believe we will dance to our victory”.
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A strong case could be made that no new environmental impact study by the State Department is required.
US President Barack Obama has rejected the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline project. The scientific analyses of the project’s environmental impact statement concluded that carbon emissions would be small and the risk to the High Plains groundwater supply low. And you could view this as a way of – for President Obama to make a statement to other world leaders that this time around, the United States is going to be very serious about coming out of these negotiations with a solution and a real game plan. The Environmental Protection Agency this summer put forward new regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The USA Today reports that the president spoke Friday morning to Justin Trudeau, the newly elected Canadian Prime Minister who had supported the project.
“I urged the president to take climate change into account with his decision, and I’m pleased that global warming was the driving factor in his rejection of TransCanada Corp.’s request”. Now, a simple look at government data shows that 1) the long threatened deluge of Canadian tar sands to the Gulf Coast by rail never happened; 2) Canadian crude comprises a tiny fraction of the crude moving by rail in the United States and 3) Canadian crude shipped by rail has declined markedly, despite the delay and rejection of Keystone XL.
Environmentalists invoked indigenous peoples in their praise of Obama’s move, in which he deemed the project to be not in the national interest.
Between 2009 and 2013, more than 8,000 miles of oil transmission pipelines have been built in the past five years in the USA, AOPL spokesperson John Stoody said, compared to the 875 miles TransCanada wants to lay in the states of Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska for its 830,000-bpd project.
Reason No. 4: Global leadership on climate change. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) called it “sickening”.
“(It) sets an important precedent that should send shockwaves through the fossil fuel industry”.
“Really their attention is diverted onto other projects”, said Julie Brough, an investment manager for a company owning stock in TransCanada.
Those sentiments were echoed by the Sierra Club, whose executive director, Michael Brune, also expressed relief and hope. TransCanada had filed its initial application all the way back in 2008, before Obama had even become president.
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Trigg was one of the most visible faces in the fight against the Keystone XL in Texas. Sources such as solar and wind are probably decades away from displacing petroleum.
