Coal is without question our dirtiest fuel source: When burned, it dumps toxins like mercury and nitrogen oxides into the air and packs an outsize punch when it comes to carbon emissions. Since America has a lot of it, though, we’ve tended to use a lot: Historically, around half our electricity has been generated by coal combustion plants. But as a result of sustained anti-coal activism, low prices for natural gas, and new EPA regulations on power plant emissions, Americans are using a lot less coal than we used to, and the future of the sooty stuff in this country is looking dim. So the U.S. coal industry is pinning its hopes on China. While historically most of our exported coal has gone to Europe, U.S. exports to China increased 176 percent between 2009 and 2010, and that number is likely to keep rising as the Asian market for coal continues to expand. The prospect of shipping coal across the Pacific is even more appealing considering that Western states like Wyoming and Montana have vast coal reserves in the Powder River Basin, one of the largest coal deposits in the world.
But while the incentives to drastically scale up Western-mined, Asia-bound coal exports exist, the infrastructure to do so does not — at least, not yet. Coal mining companies are hoping to change that by building up to six coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest — three apiece in Washington and Oregon — with the combined capacity to ship around 150 million short tons of coal to Asia each year. These new plans would more than double 107 million short tons of coal the U.S. exported in 2011.
But good news for the coal industry is bad news for the climate, and whether Powder Basin coal is burned here or abroad, it’ll add the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions to an already-warming atmosphere. In 2007, Powder Basin coal alone was responsible for an estimated 877 tons of carbon, around 13 percent of the U.S. total; Eric de Place at the Sightline Institute crunched the numbers and found that the coal shipped by just two of the proposed terminals would be responsible for more annual emissions than the tar sands oil carried by the Keystone pipeline. As Bryan Walsh points out, many industrialized countries have cut their own carbon footprint by exporting carbon-intensive fuels to be burned elsewhere, essentially employing an accounting trick rather than actually reducing global emissions. But climate activists aren’t going to let us get away with it if they can help it: Having largely succeeded in stopping Americans from burning coal, activists are trying to make sure no one else burns it either. And, as with Keystone, they’re seeking to accomplish their climate goals by blocking fossil fuel infrastructure from being built.
Climate change is notoriously difficult to organize around, but climate activists have won one small victory after another by allying with local communities who are worried about the more immediate and tangible impacts of fossil fuels on health and quality of life. Shipping coal overseas instead of using it at home may cut down on pollution from coal-fired power plants, but the health impacts of coal could simply be shifted to the communities along the transportation route and near the proposed port sites: accordingly people in Montana, Washington and Oregon have raised concerns about coal dust, diesel pollution, increased railway traffic and use of waterfront space.
In Washington, new ports have to pass a review under the State Environmental Policy Act, and in late 2010, the state temporarily blocked one proposed coal terminal at the Port of Longview, citing increased greenhouse gas emissions. Other terminals, like the Gateway Pacific Terminal, are similarly contentious: Though past campaigns have sought to build connections between Washington’s labor and environmental constituencies, local communities are divided along those familiar lines over whether the project should go forward. In Oregon, the proposed terminals aren’t subject to statewide review, yet Gov. John Kitzhaber has joined protesters in voicing concerns about the environmental and health impacts of increased coal traffic, calling for a “full national debate” on the matter. While the EPA has also weighed in with concerns, the federal government has no formal role in the review process, so whether coal exports actually become the focus of a national conversation will probably depend on how successful activists are at stopping them.
Matt Yglesias thinks they have a decent shot, explaining that “the fact that the vast coal reserves of the American heartland need to pass through the relatively narrow bottleneck of the generally progressive Pacific Northwest gives environmentalists one of their best available opportunities to curb carbon dioxide emissions in the absence of any meaningful progress toward a national or global framework.” But if the coal industry starts to get worried, it’s hard to imagine Republicans and coal state Democrats won’t gleefully seize the opportunity to denounce the protesters as tree-hugging job killers. In fact, the Obama administration’s so-called war on coal is already shaping up to be a campaign issue in states like Kentucky and West Virginia, which together employ nearly half the coal mining industry’s 83,000 workers. But employment in renewable energy industries is rapidly outstripping coal mining jobs, and coal isn’t likely to ever produce another great jobs boom: Even if Western coal mining ramps up, it’s over twice as productive as Appalachian mining, which means more profits but fewer jobs, and the coal export terminals themselves won’t create many jobs either.
Still, it’s common to hear the argument that if China’s going to get its coal somewhere, we might as well be the ones who sell it to them. And sure, Indonesia and Australia will continue to supply China with coal regardless of what the U.S. does. But there’s evidence to suggest that the loss of U.S. coal exports could still make a difference in China’s energy habits. In a recent paper, former University of Montana economics chairman Thomas Powers argues that stopping coal exports could actually result in enough of a price hike to decrease coal use in China, saying that “decisions the Northwest makes now will impact Chinese energy habits for the next half-century.”
Of course, all the usual caveats still apply: The coal being exported still represents a small fraction of global carbon emissions; coal may be replaced with other carbon-intensive fossil fuels; dealing with climate change requires system-wide changes rather than a patchwork of stopgap local measures. While the battle continues in the Northwest, coal may find other routes out of the country: Coal producers have made deals with ports in British Columbia and along the Gulf Coast, where environmental scientists are concerned that the runoff from expanding coal-exporting facilities in Plaquemines Parish could undermine Louisiana’s attempts to restore its rapidly disappearing wetlands. On the other hand, coal investments are riskier than they seem: If Mongolia starts selling more coal to China, or if China itself starts mining and using more coal, the bottom could fall out of the market, leaving Oregon and Washington with worthless coal terminals.
At the same time, the argument for why coal exports matter actually is pretty simple: as Grist’s David Roberts sums up, “to prevent the climate from spiraling forever out of control, we’re going to have to leave most of the remaining fossil fuels in the ground … we desperately need to keep coal in the ground anywhere and everywhere it’s possible.” American activists can’t stop Australia or Indonesia from selling China coal, but if they can manage to stop American coal from leaving the country or being used within its borders, a huge amount of coal — and the carbon it contains — will stay put. So while it’s a big if, it’s a battle many feel they have no choice but to fight.
When President Obama announced his support for the southern half of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline last week in Cushing, Okla., it was a blow to the environmental groups that had worked to stop the pipeline from going forward and succeeded in delaying approval of its northern half. In particular, Obama’s statement that his administration had already approved “enough new oil and gas pipelines to encircle the earth” seemed intended to remind anti-pipeline campaigners that Keystone XL is just one of many pipelines with the potential to transport Canadian tar sands oil to the United States, and TransCanada just one of many players in the energy game.
Cushing was a particularly appropriate setting to convey that message: It’s the crossroads for much of the nation’s oil and gas infrastructure, and inadequate pipeline capacity has made the town a bottleneck for fossil fuels, particularly with the recent influx of oil coming from Alberta. At any given time, between 30 and 40 million gallons of oil sit there, awaiting transport to Midwestern or Gulf Coast refineries. This means that the chunk of the pipeline that connects Cushing’s surplus to refineries along the Gulf Coast — the chunk of the project that’s moving forward — is the one that TransCanada really cares about in the short term.
Other companies aren’t waiting around to see what happens with Keystone XL either: Enbridge, a Canadian energy company, has already purchased a stake in a pipeline that currently transports crude from the Gulf Coast to Cushing, with the intention of reversing the pipeline’s flow in order to carry tar sands oil south from Alberta. In conjunction with Houston-based company Enterprise, Enbridge is also planning to construct a new pipeline that would expand an existing route to bring tar sands oil to the Gulf; because the new pipeline would not cross international borders, it would not require State Department review. Those two projects combined would add the capacity to transport 850,000 barrels of tar sands oil each day by 2014, according to Enbridge’s CEO; by comparison, Keystone XL would transport around 700,000 barrels daily.
And there are plenty of other ways to get tar sands oil into the country: Other pipelines in the extensive network of fossil fuel infrastructure built to transport regular crude could begin carrying tar sands oil instead, while existing tar sands pipelines could ramp up the amount of oil they transport. Tar sands oil could also be transported by rail, though it’s less economical to do so; nevertheless, Canadian railroads have long been eyeing the fuel, and a report commissioned by the U.S. State Department estimated that railroads could transport up to 1.25 million barrels per day. In short, Obama’s announcement was a reminder that delaying, or even derailing, Keystone XL is a temporary victory, and one more important in symbolism than substance.
Pipeline protesters know this: As Bill McKibben, one of the most prominent leaders of the anti-Keystone movement, told Joe Nocera, “Keystone, by itself, won’t make or break the environment.” On the other hand, nor will it create jobs, reduce our reliance on foreign oil, or affect gas prices. In sum, the pipeline itself will have remarkably little effect on any of the issues it’s come to symbolize. Nocera and others have used that fact to argue that we might as well just go ahead and build it — that is, to shut down the debate over Keystone XL and tar sands instead of opening it up.
But anti-Keystone forces have always been upfront about the fact that they see the battle over the pipeline as a political one. McKibben has repeatedly described the pipeline protests as the start of a broader fight against climate change, and as a means to galvanize a public conversation about climate change, fossil fuels and carbon emissions — topics that American politicians have for the most part tried desperately to avoid.
Lately, though, that conversation doesn’t seem to be happening. Instead, as Lisa Song of Inside Climate News argues, “climate change has taken a back seat in the debate” in recent weeks. Meanwhile, conservative groups continue to press any chance to blame President Obama for lackluster job creation and high gas prices, however unrelated those issues are to the pipeline. If Keystone XL matters at all, it’s for the questions it raises about the impacts of different energy sources, and the types of energy we should be prioritizing. When tar sands oil, rather than just Keystone XL, is the issue, a different range of options opens up.
A growing body of evidence suggests that tar sands oil is a different type of fuel than regular crude, and that we should treat it as such. From a purely physical standpoint, tar sands oil is a different beast: It’s transported in the form of diluted bitumen, which is heavier and more corrosive than regular crude. A recent study reviewing the existing evidence suggests that bitumen spills are more likely, more damaging and more difficult to clean up than conventional crude oil. While estimates vary as to the precise climate impact — the EU says tar sands result in 22 percent more emissions than conventional oil, while a study in Nature estimates a 15 percent greater impact and an EPA analysis puts it as high as 82 percent — it’s generally acknowledged that the process of extracting and processing tar sands oil is an energy- and emissions-intensive one.
The question of whether tar sands oil should be classified differently from regular crude has already generated controversy in the European Union, which has been debating a proposal to label tar sands oil as highly polluting. Fearing that such a classification would doom tar sands oil in European countries that are trying to meet carbon reduction targets and tarnish the fuel’s reputation elsewhere, Canada has lobbied heavily against the proposal, and even threatened to take the matter up with the World Trade Organization should it pass. A vote last month failed to reach a conclusion, and the issue is still up for debate.
While the political calculus is obviously different in the U.S., where an entire political party is determined to ignore the scientific consensus around climate change, some states and regions are trying to look at fuel sources more systematically. As part of its state-level climate policy, California’s Air Resource Board has issued a low-carbon fuel standard, which would require fuel producers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the full extraction-to-combustion life cycle. The oil industry has brought a legal challenge against the regulation, which it claims discriminates against out-of-state fuel sources. If the court rules that California can implement the low-carbon fuel standard, though, it could spark a wave of similar efforts. In particular, the New England and mid-Atlantic states that make up the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative may follow suit — though that initiative is also under siege, particularly as Enbridge and other pipeline companies explore options for increasing the flow of tar sands oil to Northeastern states.
In any case, a more comprehensive consideration of tar sands oil and other fossil fuels is in danger of getting lost amid the seemingly endless cycle of political maneuvering over the physical pipeline itself. The fact that Keystone’s fate is up for debate at all is remarkable, considering that it was considered a done deal. But if environmentalists are to avoid getting bogged down in the never-ending battle over a single piece of the nation’s gigantic energy infrastructure, they need to start turning an impressive feat of political mobilization into the promised conversation about tar sands oil and fossil fuels before they lose momentum entirely.
Republicans have sought to frame the Keystone XL pipeline as a job-creating project being thwarted by “radical environmentalists.” Is it? A new Cornell University study claims that the pipeline could actually have a negative impact on the economies of the states it would pass through.
“In the national debate, job creation has been set alongside environmental concerns in a rigid either-or fashion,” says Sean Sweeney, one of the study’s authors, “But oil spills also kill jobs, they consume resources, they have an impact on health, and can also lead to a lower quality of life.”
The range of estimates of jobs vary widely. TransCanada claims the pipeline will create 20,000 jobs. A State Department report estimates that only 20 permanent operating jobs would be created in the six states along the pipeline route. By comparison, those same states are home to robust agricultural, ranching and tourist industries that are dependent on water and vulnerable to environmental contamination. Across the six states agriculture employs 571,000 workers and tourism 780,000; the total revenue from those sectors, respectively, is $76.3 billion and $67 billion.
Sludge not crude
Tar sands oil — known in energy circles as diluted bitumen — may be more damaging to environments and communities than regular crude. Said Sweeney, “Diluted bitumen is an irregular substance — it runs thick and thin, hot and cold. It’s basically a sludge, not like regular crude — it behaves differently.” Tar sands also seem more likely to spill than conventional crude: The spill rate for diluted bitumen in the northern Midwest between 2007-2010 was three times the national average for conventional oil. This may be because the heavy, corrosive material puts greater stress on pipelines.
The already existing Keystone I pipeline, which runs 2,100 miles from Alberta to Illinois, began operating in 2010; in the two years since, 35 spills have occurred. In the pipeline’s first year of operation alone, its spill rate was 100 times TransCanada’s projection. All told the amount of tar sands oil being transported through the United States has more than tripled in the past decade to 600,000 barrels in 2010. Keystone XL, if built, would add another 830,000 barrels per day.
John Stansbury, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Nebraska, analyzed spill data from the Keystone I pipeline to estimate that 91 spills would occur over the course of 50 years of Keystone XL’s operation — close to two spills each year. In a worst-case scenario, he says, a spill could contaminate 4.9 billion gallons of groundwater in Nebraska’s Sand Hills with benzene, a known carcinogen.
The threat the pipeline poses to Nebraska’s Ogallala Aquifer, which provides 30 percent of the irrigation water in the U.S., has been much-discussed, but the pipeline would also cross another 1,747 bodies of water, including the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers and the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer, the third largest aquifer in Texas.
If Keystone were to leak — or worse, rupture — the consequences could be serious. In July 2010, a pipeline operated by the company Enbridge ruptured — the company has never explained why — spilling 1 million gallons of tar sands oil into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River. The oil drifted 40 miles upstream, causing 145 reported instances of illness and health problems for people living in the riverside community of Marshall, Mich. Marshall residents living within 200 feet of the river were eligible for a buyout program; about 130 people sold their houses to Enbridge, leaving some areas uninhabited.
The Kalamazoo cleanup has cost $725 million so far — twice as much as Enbridge estimated — and the river remains closed to fishing, hunting and other recreational activities over a year and a half after the spill occurred. Officials in the Calhoun County Health Department have said some bitumen will likely remain in the river “indefinitely.” Sweeney points out that the rural areas along pipeline routes are unprepared to cope with spills. “They had to bring someone in from the Gulf to deal with Kalamazoo,” he explained.
While the Kalamazoo spill was the biggest-ever tar sands spill, pipeline spills occur with startling frequency. In 2011 alone, there were 600 reported pipeline incidents. TransCanada’s website argues that “if they do occur, pipeline leaks are small,” yet pipeline spills caused 17 deaths and 68 injuries, and over $335 million in property damage. In 2010, when the Kalamazoo spill occurred, the damages from pipeline spills topped $1 billion. While pipeline spills don’t get the attention of disasters like the Exxon-Valdez and BP, they point to a familiar pattern of underestimating risk and underpreparing for disaster.
TransCanada insists that it will comply with all federal regulations, and construct and operate Keystone XL “to the highest industry standards.” Danielle Droitsch, an attorney with the National Resources Defense Council, argues that we don’t know enough about diluted bitumen to be able to transport it safely. “We’re building these pipelines as if they were conventional oil pipelines,” she said. “We don’t have any special regulations in place to deal with the fact that these are tar sands pipelines and they are very different. Until we have a new regulatory system in place there are no safety measures proposed that would make this pipeline safer.”
And in the meantime? “There’s no question this pipeline will spill — it’s a question of when.”
Ever since President Obama delayed the decision to grant TransCanada a permit to build the Keystone XL pipeline pending further environmental review back in January, Republicans have been cooking up various schemes to force the project’s approval. A few weeks ago, Republican leaders stuck Keystone mandates into both the House and Senate drafts of the transportation bill. In response, anti-pipeline activists kicked into high gear and mobilized supporters to send over 800,000 messages to their representatives within 24 hours, and the president threatened to veto any bill containing a Keystone rider.
The House’s transportation bill is on the rocks, but the Senate’s version is moving along, and the pro-Keystone amendment sponsored by John Hoeven, R-N.D., went up for a vote yesterday. The Hoeven amendment would have bypassed the need for presidential approval, using Congress’ constitutional power to regulate international commerce to skip the review process and green-light the pipeline immediately. The amendment failed in a close vote Thursday afternoon: a majority of senators, including 11 Democrats, voted in favor, but the 56 votes it garnered were just shy of the 60 needed to pass.
Another amendment to the transportation bill, sponsored by Ron Wyden, D-Ore., would have approved Keystone on the conditions that it be built with materials manufactured in the United States and that the oil transported by the pipeline be used within the U.S. rather than exported abroad — requirements that many observers speculated would have effectively served to kill the project. That bill failed 34-64, with Republican naysayers joined by a handful of New England Democrats who oppose the pipeline on grounds of its climate impact.
All in all, the day’s votes constituted a narrow victory for anti-Keystone forces, and it may be short-lived: Republicans are already saying they’ll put the pipeline back in the transportation bill when the differences between the Senate and House versions are hammered out in committee. Still, it’s another remarkable victory for a campaign that seemed futile to most experts at the outset, particularly considering the wealth and power of the industry it’s fighting. Indeed, the 56 senators who voted for the pipeline have received approximately 500 percent more in donations from the oil and gas industry than the 44 who voted against, according to data provided by the Dirty Energy Money website. The American Petroleum Institute was so sure of victory that they mistakenly sent out a victorious press release just moments after the amendment failed.
The inflated claims about job creation that littered media accounts in the early days of the Keystone campaign have been mercifully debunked, to the point where even TransCanada has backed down from its early claims that the pipeline would create hundreds of thousands of jobs. Yet Republicans have continued to beat the lifeless job-creation horse: Dick Lugar, R-Ind., for example, claimed that the project would create jobs “almost immediately.”
In the face of rising gas prices, Republicans are also now turning their focus to the energy aspects of the debate, arguing that Keystone will lower fuel prices: Lugar said that “Americans are screaming for more affordable oil supplies,” while Hoeven claimed the pipeline will “help control fuel prices at the pump and reduce our reliance on Middle East oil.” Some Democrats are joining the chorus: Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., defended her support for the pipeline by saying “people care very much about the price of gas.”
Indeed, they do, but Keystone will have little to do with that price. While there’s some disagreement among energy experts over what precisely the impact of the pipeline on gas prices would be, nearly all agree that it would be insignificant. And by decreasing the surplus of Canadian oil in the Midwest, the pipeline could raise even gas prices throughout that region. As Philip Verleger, head of the energy consulting firm P.K. Verleger LLC, told Bloomberg News, “The Canadian plan was to use their market power to raise prices in the United States and get more money from consumers.
But even Verleger thinks Keystone would only raise the price of gas by a few cents per gallon. As Frances Beinecke of the Natural Resources Defense Council points out, the idea that importing more oil from Canada will lower fuel prices is patently false: Over the past decade, the amount of oil we buy from Canada has increased by 50 percent, but gas prices have nearly tripled. And implications that the pipeline would alleviate the pressure of current gas prices are simply disingenuous: Even if the Senate voted to approve the pipeline immediately, it wouldn’t go into operation until 2014.
Keystone XL would also have little to no impact on “dependence on foreign oil” or any of the other boogeymen frequently trotted out by those urging its construction: As the State Department wrote in January in the report accompanying its recommendation that the president delay the decision, “denying the permit at this time is unlikely to have a substantial impact on U.S. employment, economic activity, trade, energy security, or foreign policy over the longer term.”
In any case, TransCanada isn’t waiting around for Congress: they’re already making plans to start construction on the southern half of the pipeline, which would run from Cushing, Okla. — the terminus of many existing pipelines from Canada, and currently a congestion point in the oil transportation system — and through Texas to refineries along the Gulf Coast. Obama isn’t fighting them on this one: Rather, White House spokesman Jay Carney spoke favorably of TransCanada’s plan, and said the administration would “take every step possible to expedite the necessary federal permits.” The company is also in the midst of revising the pipeline’s route through Nebraska to avoid the Ogallala Aquifer, and has said that it will release its updated plans to the public shortly before applying again for approval. But the residents of the states impacted by Keystone’s southern stretch may not be much more amenable than Nebraskans: Many Texans have already voiced concerns about the potential impacts of the pipeline on their land, including Julia Trigg Crawford, who’s in a court battle with TransCanada over the use of eminent domain.
Anti-Keystone forces aren’t resting easy, either: Earlier this week, several dozen Lakota protesters temporarily blocked two trucks from passing through their reservation in Wanblee, S.D., on their way to a tar sands field in Canada, resulting in five arrests. Said Debra White Plume, a Lakota grass-roots leader who was arrested during the protest, “Our Lakota people oppose this pipeline because of the potential contamination of the surface water and of the Ogallala aquifer.”
Rest assured — or dismayed — that we haven’t seen the last of this debate. As long as Americans are worried about jobs and energy prices, Republicans will keep trying to hammer the president with Keystone, regardless of its negligible impact on either.
When the Obama administration announced last month that the Keystone pipeline project would be delayed pending a more thorough environmental review of its impacts, Keystone’s opponents celebrated, but warned that the fight was far from over. Sure enough, pipeline politics remain front-and-center as those in favor of the pipeline seek to circumvent the longer review process while its opponents struggle to fend off attacks on their tenuous victory. The past few weeks have seen a burst of legislative maneuvering as Republicans seek a way to rubber-stamp the pipeline without the president’s approval.
The maneuvering is intense because the struggle over the 1,600-mile proposed pipeline has become a proxy battle in a larger war over climate change, corporate influence and the legacy of the Obama administration. Both sides agree that the fate of Keystone XL will influence more than just whether oil is transported from the tar sands of central Canada to the United States. It will signal whether the U.S. is moving away from the carbon-fueled economy or embracing it anew.
The Republicans are attacking from several directions. A House bill introduced by Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., in December would require the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to issue a permit within 30 days of receiving an application, essentially removing the Interior Department and Army Corps of Engineers from the oversight process, exempting the pipeline from several state and federal environmental regulations, and eliminating any discretionary review process.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the bill on Feb. 7, while killing Democratic amendments to prevent Keystone oil from being exported after processing, to block TransCanada from using eminent domain to seize private land, and to certify TransCanada’s claims that most of the steel used in building the pipeline would be manufactured in the United States. Republican leaders have also indicated that they’re considering inserting the bill’s language into other legislation in a replay of December’s payroll-tax-bill shenanigans.
Another bill, sponsored by Rep. Connie Mack, R-Fla., would allow Congress to approve the pipeline without presidential review by invoking Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate international commerce; Sens. David Vitter, R-La., Dick Lugar, R-Ind., and John Hoeven, R-N.D., co-sponsored a companion bill in the Senate. And today, Republican leaders added a provision to the same effect to a transportation funding bill that may go up for a vote as soon as Tuesday. In response, anti-Keystone activists are seeking to imitate the success of last month’s anti-SOPA online activism, aiming to inundate senators with a stated goal of half a million emails within 24 hours to demonstrate that opposition to the pipeline remains strong.
The Keystone provision is unlikely to pass the Senate, let alone get a signature from President Obama. But if the past few weeks are any indication, we haven’t seen the last of the pro-pipeline legislation by a long shot. Mitch McConnell gave the game away in a statement to the conservative publication Human Events, saying, “The only way we’re going to get the Keystone pipeline started is to defeat Barack Obama.”
The party’s aim is to make the pipeline’s rejection a symbol of Obama’s alleged failure to stimulate the economy, and more generally, to paint a portrait of the president as a weak leader more concerned with appeasing “special interest groups” than with taking decisive action. Said Mack at a recent press conference, “The president has decided he’s not going to lead on this issue … so we need to get him out of the way,” while Lugar declared, “The president has failed to lead.”
But pipeline protesters counter that Obama’s decision on Keystone represented a courageous refusal to give in to pressure from fossil fuel lobbyists: MoveOn.org called it a “bold stand against the power of the oil industry,” while Bill McKibben said he “did the brave thing” in standing up to the American Petroleum Institute. While the issue is frequently portrayed as one that could divide key factions of Obama’s base, with labor unions in favor of the pipeline and environmentalists against, several major unions have come out in support of the administration’s decision to delay the pipeline, calling efforts to speed up the review the “cynical move” of a “do-nothing Republican Congress” and stating, “President Obama has acted wisely.”
A report released by the State Department investigator general last week also raised concerns about several aspects of the original environmental review. The report found that the original review failed to consider conflicts of interest: One of TransCanada’s lobbyists, Paul Elliott, is a former aide to Secretary of State Clinton, and the third-party contractor selected to conduct the review had prior financial relationships with TransCanada.
Moreover, the State Department neglected to address several regulations and had insufficient expertise to adequately consider issues like the pipeline’s potential impact on endangered species. The findings bolster environmental groups’ claims that the pipeline serves the interests of the oil industry, which is among the Republican Party’s top donors, and TransCanada, whose spending on lobbying has tripled in the past year to $1.73 million, $1.33 million of which went to Elliott for pipeline-related expenditures.
And it’s not just American politics that have been shaken up by the controversy over Keystone. After the delay was announced, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he would begin looking into alternative markets for the country’s natural resources, and during a recent visit to Beijing, “pledged closer trade ties with China.” That, in turn, has sparked a wave of concern about the specter of “foreign oil” back in the U.S., although most of the oil transported by the pipeline would ultimately be exported rather than used to supply the country’s energy needs. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., argues that Keystone would make the U.S. into “a middleman between Alberta and Asia” while doing nothing to reduce the country’s reliance on foreign oil.
Going forward, the coalition of activists opposed to the pipeline plans to deliver the signatures they’ve gathered over the past 24 hours to senators today, as Congress starts to consider the transportation bill. Majority Leader Harry Reid has indicated that a Keystone rider will kill that bill—and in any case, few Democrats support the House version, which Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said ”takes us back to the dark ages.” Even if this attempt to fast-track the pipeline fails, though, there are plenty of other pro-Keystone bills in the works, and the GOP may try to insert a similar provision into the next payroll tax cut extension.
Either way, expect to hear more about Keystone over the next few months, as it’s clear that both sides want to keep the issue in the news. The ultimate outcome will likely depend on whether the public sees Keystone as a jobs issue or an environmental one, and indeed, some polls suggest that Americans are more receptive to environmental arguments than Republicans seem to think. In fact, Democratic leaders—some of whom support Keystone, and most of whom have tried to hedge their bets—may be a tougher sell.
Dead or alive, the Keystone XL pipeline now runs through the heartland of American politics.
The Obama administration announced today that it has rejected the proposed 1,700-mile pipeline that would link the tar sands of Alberta, where crude oil is extracted, with U.S. refineries along the Gulf. Republicans are promising to step up their efforts to build the pipeline, which was largely unknown to the public just six months ago.
The decision isn’t exactly a surprise. Obama has repeatedly made clear that he would not approve any attempts to force the pipeline through without an adequate environmental review. The State Department had also stated that it would not approve the pipeline if the time frame for the review was rushed, warning in December that the deadline imposed by Congress would “compromise the process.” Nevertheless, House Republicans inserted a provision into the payroll bill passed last month requiring the administration to reach a decision on the pipeline by Feb. 21.
This rejection does not kill the pipeline. According to the Washington Post, the administration will allow TransCanada to propose an alternative route through Nebraska that avoids the sensitive Ogallala aquifer. Nebraska and TransCanada have already reached a tentative agreement to reroute the pipeline, so it seems likely that the corporation will proceed with this option.
Republicans in Congress have already begun to explore ways of advancing the pipeline even in the case of an Obama rejection. Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota is reportedly drafting legislation that would allow Congress to approve the provision without presidential approval.
Still, environmentalists greeted the news with cautious celebration, cheering the decision while recognizing that the fight isn’t over. In a message to supporters, Bill McKibben praised the president for standing up to Big Oil, and called the decision a “victory for Americans who testified in record numbers” while acknowledging that “the fossil fuel lobby won’t give up easily.” Indeed, the fact that the pipeline was debated at all is due to pressure from McKibben’s army of activists. Last August, shortly after sit-ins against the pipeline began, a former State Department official said approval was “likely.”
House Speaker John Boehner, on the other hand, insisted the president should approve the project, noting that it would “create 100,000 new jobs” — a statistic taken from a widely quoted but oft-criticized study conducted by TransCanada. (Independent analysis by Cornell University suggests the pipeline would create between 2,500 and 4,650 temporary construction jobs, while the State Department projects 5,000-6,000.) Boehner went on to say that Obama was seeking to delay the Keystone project “until it’s convenient for him to make a decision,” asking, “Where are the jobs?”
Boehner’s statement reflected attempts by Republicans to spin the Keystone decision as a capitulation to “radical environmentalists.” Democrats, on the other hand, will try to place blame with the Republican House, arguing that they invited the pipeline’s demise by including the Keystone provision in an unrelated bill despite warnings that it would be rejected.
The oil industry has indicated that it will try to make the pipeline into an election year issue. The president of the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s top lobbying group, warned two weeks ago that “Anything less than approval or acquiescence in allowing the pipeline to go forward would be inconsistent with the vast majority of Americans.”
David Roberts at Grist points out that Republicans will try to paint Obama as “a job-killing pinko who hates energy,” no matter what he does with regard to Keystone.
A coal mine owned by Arch Coal Co. (Credit: AP/Matthew Brown) 
The Syncrude tar sands mine north of Fort McMurray, Alberta. (Credit: Reuters/Todd Korol) 
Members of the "chain gang" assemble a pipeline near Burlington, Ill. (Credit: AP) 
The Keystone Oil Pipeline is pictured under construction in North Dakota (Credit: © Handout . / Reuters) 
Protestors outside the White House demand a stop to the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. (Credit: AP/Evan Vucci) 
Protesters marched against the Keystone XL pipeline in Washington last November. (Credit: Jeff Malet/MaletPhoto.com) 