Obama’s Delay Says Keystone XL Approval Seems Assured

We have been reporting that the Obama administration has secretly decided to approve Keystone XL, the pipeline that would transport Canadian oil across 1,711 miles of six Great Plains states to refineries in Texas. The President’s announcement that the decision has been postponed tells us that approval by him will be a certainty. Why else would the decision be delayed until after the 2012 election? Mr. Obama is clearly avoiding alienating the environmentalists that form part of his base until after he is re-elected. At that he doesn’t need them anymore.

And, of course, if his opponent is elected, approval is an equal certainty. Republicans are, as a matter of policy, dismissive of environmental concerns, witness the long list of riders to bills in Congress that seek to roll back the Clean Air Act and throttle the Environmental Protection Agency.

The symptoms of covert approval of the oil pipeline had been seeping to the surface, most recently in a New York Times report that the Canadian company that seeks to build the pipeline is suing those who are denying access to their land with threats of use of eminent domain to gain easements through their property. Let that sink in: a Canadian company clearly acting on assurances from our government that it can seize rights to American property through eminent domain.

The State Department was in charge of the vetting process because the pipeline crosses our border. Evidence that this was already a done deal was earlier revealed in e-mails obtained by Friends of the Earth in a Freedom of Information Act request that show a cozy relationship between State and lobbyists for the pipeline company — party invitations and coaching how to spin their message to the media, for example. The real eye-opener was an e-mail exchange between State Department officials and lobbyists that said TransCanada’s strategy was to drop its request to exceed U.S. pipeline pressure regulations in order to win the go-ahead for the pipeline, but once approved, they would re-apply to exceed U.S. pressure limits — a subterfuge that — wink, wink — says that whatever it takes is fine with the folks at State.

The pipeline would and deliver 700,000 barrels of crude daily from Canada’s Alberta Province for refining in Texas to reduce America’s dependence on oil from unstable and often hostile foreign countries. The tar sands’ 175 billion barrels of recoverable oil could reduce OPEC country imports by an estimated 18% by 2020.

What’s more, the Keystone XL pipeline would provide 20,000 jobs, says the pipeline company, Calgary-based TransCanada (more like 6,000 says the State Department).

Those are the positives, and the State Department had its thumb on that side of the scale. They had already shown bias by saying in late August that the pipeline would have "no significant impact" on land and water along its course and that spills would have a minimal effect, amounting only to "several hundred feet or less". The Environmental Protection Agency has berated State Department for its superficial assessment.

With State in its pocket, TransCanada had even taken the first steps toward construction by clearing a 100-mile corridor through the grasslands of northern Nebraska. That was the claim of a lawsuit filed in Omaha by three conservation groups. “The State Department…is running a corrupt review process by giving TransCanada a green light to begin construction”, said Friends of the Earth president Erich Pica.

Think of all the positives we earlier listed. Reducing OPEC imports, for example.

Not so fast. The New York Times also reported that of the six refiners that have already contracted for three-quarters of the oil, five are foreign. And the one American company, Valero, sells to the world. This oil "is destined for export". Canada has limited means to deliver to other countries — a mountainous coastline west of Alberta, no west coast refineries. The pipeline is simply to run the oil through this country and out to the world.

Is the pipeline as safe as the State Department says? The intended route would cross some 2,000 rivers and pose a significant threat to the Ogallala, the largest water aquifer in the United States, which supplies 30% of the water used in the U.S. for agriculture — 83% of Nebraska’s agricultural water and 78% of the that state’s public water supply. The pipeline would run 65 miles across Nebraska’s Sand Hills region, a wetlands where groundwater lies less than 10 feet below the surface. Ranchers and farmers are alarmed by the threat to their water.

That is what drew the most intense protests both from outraged Nebraskans and environmentalists who demonstrated at the White House. They cite a Keystone pipe that came on line in 2010 has already had had 16 spills, mostly small, but one at a North Dakota pumping station released over 16,000 gallons.

Which brings us to tar sand oil itself. Canada prefers the more comely term "oil sands", but the first description is a better fit. It is bitumen — highly
A tar sands strip mine in Albert, Canada
viscous, black and sticky — that native people once used to seal their canoes, which explains why a Rand Corporation study found that oil from tar sands produces from 10% to 30% more carbon dioxide emissions when burned than does standard oil.

That's only the beginning of the environmental depredation. The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) says that producing that oil results in triple the emissions of regular oil drilling. That's because natural gas must be used to produce steam to separate the bitumen from sand, and is needed again to turn the bitumen into synthetic crude. At current production levels, that's the greenhouse gas equivalent, every day, of 12 million cars, and enough natural gas to heat six million homes — and that's before the tar sand oil is burned as fuel.

Water used to produce that steam winds up in tailing ponds that so far occupy 50 square kilometers. The toxic water kills unsuspecting migrating birds and leakage — alleged by the NRDC and denied by Canada — contaminates the water table and flows into streams.

What's more, tar sands are strip-mined. It takes two tons of oily sand to leach one barrel of oil. To get at the sand requires felling the natural carbon reservoir of the northern forests. The doubling to 1.8 million barrels of tar sands production projected by Canada's environmental ministry over the coming decade leads to cutting down some 740,000 acres of trees.

In the 2008 campaign President Obama promised to support next generation biofuels and reduce carbon emissions 80% by 2050. Twenty American scientists wrote to the Obama administration this summer inveighing against the pipeline and any encouragement to Canada's exploitation of this dirtiest of oils. As NASA's James Hansen has said, that would be “game over” for any hope of stemming climate change.

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