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If you are among those who thought that the Keystone XL pipeline was turned down by the Obama administration because it was bad for the environment and, thus, should not be built, I have news for you: the pipeline company involved is considering building the US portion of the pipeline anyway. And, they don’t need permission from the State Department to do so. There are reported to be two ideas under consideration. One would be to build a pipeline into eastern Montana or perhaps western North Dakota and finish it out to the refineries near the Gulf of Mexico. The other idea is to build the Oklahoma/Texas portion of the pipeline and wait for later developments.
1.6 billion dollars has already been spent getting ready to build the line. Most of that expense represents paying land owners for the right of way for the line to cross their land. That’s a rather huge investment to go down the drain and what smart company would want to throw it away?
The major environmental issue of the pipeline mainly revolved around the development of tar sands oil in Canada, not about the pipeline itself. Questions were raised about the line crossing portions of Nebraska because of the huge underground water supply, but the pipeline company said it was willing to detour around the sensitive areas. The Environment Defense Fund’s main objection was to the huge environmental costs of producing oil from the tar sands. First, it takes enormous amounts of water and energy to get the oil out and, second, using that oil would obviously contribute long term to global warming. Various newspaper editorials have pointed out, however, that it would take 1,000 years to use all of that oil and, presumably, the nation and the world will have better, less polluting sources of energy long before that time.
This whole thing looks like a typical Washington controversy stirred up by both sides for political advantage more than anything else. Obama wanted to put the decision off till after the elections, the Republicans forced legislation requiring an earlier decision, knowing Obama could not approve in that timeframe, and the State Department turned it down on the basis of a lack of complete environmental studies, not on the merits. Now, it looks like the major part of the pipeline could go forward. Once that is done, extending it across the border could wind up being a non-issue. This is, sadly, business as usual in DC: lots of noise gets made, voters on both sides get angry and nothing is settled.
Doug Terry, 1.23.12
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