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Environmental Disaster: Trump Plans To Advance Keystone, Dakota Access Pipelines

Environmental Disaster: Trump Plans To Advance Keystone, Dakota Access Pipelines

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump plans to sign two executive actions on Tuesday to advance construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, an administration official told Reuters.

The move comes after months-long protests by environmentalists and Native American groups in North Dakota against Energy Transfer Partners LP’s $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline, which would bring crude oil from the state’s Bakken oil patch through the Midwest and into the U.S. Gulf Coast.

A company spokeswoman could not immediately be reached for comment.

Under former president Barack Obama, Transcanada Corp’s Keystone XL oil pipeline was rejected in 2015 after environmentalists campaigned against the project for more than seven years. Transcanada declined to comment.

Trump’s action, which comes in his fourth full day in office, would be a boon for oil producers concerned about limited pipeline capacity bringing oil to market.

(Reporting by Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru and Catherine Ngai in New York; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli; Editing by Savio D’Souza)

IMAGE: Benji Buffalo (R) greets a friend to his campsite inside of the Oceti Sakowin camp as “water protectors” continue to demonstrate against plans to pass the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, U.S., December 2, 2016.  REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

Energy Beggars No More, We Can Be Choosy

Energy Beggars No More, We Can Be Choosy

The Obama administration has finally passed judgment on the Keystone XL pipeline, and it’s a thumbs-down. The environmental arguments against it have always been impeccable. But it took America’s turn toward energy independence to cut down the economic case for it.

Americans still need oil, but we can choose to reject the dirtiest kind. A 1,179-mile pipeline was to carry crude from the tar sands in Alberta to a pumping station in Nebraska, with a separate expansion to the Gulf Coast. Tar sands oil generates 17 percent more planet-warming gases than conventional oil.

In the days of heavy reliance on Mideast oil, opposing any dependable new source of oil, above all from friendly Canada, posed political risk. But boy, have things changed. New technologies have enabled us to get at large stores of domestic oil and gas. And we’re developing ways to harvest clean energy.

Texas has so much wind power now that some utilities are giving away electricity at night. Why on earth should the U.S. be enabling the transport of tar sands gook from the bottom of the environmental oil barrel?

With the price of oil way down and little public wailing about prices at the pump, Obama was able to say “no” to the pipeline without facing serious political blowback.

Not even from Canada, where most politicians felt duty-bound to back the pipeline. That included the new prime minister, Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau. Though Trudeau’s heart wasn’t much in it, Obama’s decision to nix the project took some heat off him.

There’s no little irony in the fact that the project was ultimately stopped by people who generally don’t care about global warming. We are speaking of Nebraskans.

A major oil spill would have threatened the massive underground Ogallala aquifer, which supplies water to Nebraska’s ecologically fragile Sandhills and well beyond. The aquifer is what makes this region agriculturally rich, as opposed to the Great American Desert early travelers once thought it was.

A pipe moving 830,000 barrels of oil a day would be no small concern. And the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico did not inspire confidence in the promoters’ safety claims.

Holdout landowners not interested in letting TransCanada build a pipeline on their properties provided another source of local opposition. The idea that a foreign company could use eminent domain to take their land did not go over well at all.

The Nebraska resistance created delay, giving technology time to deliver energy independence. All that’s left is the jobs argument. And it takes a certain amount of guts to defend a massively controversial project on the basis of making some temporary construction jobs and a measly 35 permanent ones.

Many of the project’s backers have argued that pipeline or no, Canada will still extract and sell the environmentally damaging tar sands oil, so why stand in the way? Well, with the price of oil so low and the cost of moving it higher by rail than by pipeline, it’s become increasingly likely that the oil will stay in the ground — where it belongs.

Obama will be taking his pipeline decision with him to Paris next month. There he will prod a summit of foreign leaders to get super-serious about confronting the enormous security and environmental implications of climate change.

“Frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership,” Obama said with considerable understatement.

Fortunately, not approving it had become no big deal in 2015. Nowadays, we Americans can afford to be choosier about how we power our lives. That’s a wonderful position to be in.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2015 CREATORS.COM

Pipes for Transcanada Corp’s planned Keystone XL oil pipeline are pictured in Gascoyne, North Dakota in this November 14, 2014 file photo. REUTERS/Andrew Cullen/Files

Obama Rejects Canada-to-U.S Keystone XL Pipeline

Obama Rejects Canada-to-U.S Keystone XL Pipeline

By Jeff Mason and Timothy Gardner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday rejected the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada in a victory for environmentalists who have campaigned against the project for more than seven years.

“The pipeline would not make a meaningful long-term contribution to our economy,” Obama told a press conference. He said the pipeline would not reduce gasoline prices for drivers, and shipping “dirtier” crude from Canada would not increase U.S. energy security.

The denial of TransCanada Corp’s more than 800,000 barrels per day project will make it more difficult for producers to develop the province of Alberta’s oil sands. It could also put the United States in a stronger position for global climate talks in Paris that start late this month in which countries will aim to reach a deal to slow global warming.

Keystone XL would have linked existing pipeline networks in Canada and the United States to bring crude from Alberta and also some from North Dakota to refineries in Illinois and, eventually, the Gulf of Mexico coast.

TransCanada first sought the required presidential permit for the cross-border section in 2008 but the proposal inspired a wave of environmental activism that turned Keystone XL into a rallying cry to fight climate change. Blocking Keystone became a litmus test of the green movement’s ability to hinder fossil fuel extraction in Canada’s oil sands.

“This is a big win,” said Bill McKibben, the co-founder of 350.org, an environmental group. “President Obama’s decision to reject Keystone XL because of its impact on the climate is nothing short of historic, and sets an important precedent that should send shockwaves through the fossil fuel industry.”

TransCanada and other oil companies said the pipeline would have strengthened North American energy security, created thousands of construction jobs and helped to relieve a glut of oil in the country’s heartland.

But since 2008 the United States has experienced a drilling boom boosting oil production 80 percent and contributing to a slump in domestic oil prices from above $100 a barrel to about $44.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Timothy Gardner; writing by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Lisa Lambert and James Dalgleish)

U.S. President Barack Obama, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden (L) and Secretary of State John Kerry (R), speaks about the Keystone XL oil pipeline from the White House in Washington November 6, 2015. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Keystone XL Builder Tries A Delay Tactic Of Its Own As Obama Nears A Decision

Keystone XL Builder Tries A Delay Tactic Of Its Own As Obama Nears A Decision

By William Yardley and Michael A. Memoli, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

SEATTLE — The company that hopes to build the Keystone XL pipeline to carry crude oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast asked the Obama administration Monday to delay its review of the proposal — a striking turn that adds further uncertainty to a project that has generated bitter debate since it was proposed seven years ago.

The company, TransCanada, made its request in a three-paragraph letter to Secretary of State John F. Kerry, citing legal challenges it said had prompted it to change tactics. The State Department must review the project because it would cross an international border. President Barack Obama had said that he would make the final decision.

“TransCanada believes that it would be appropriate at this time for the State Department to pause in its review of the presidential permit application for Keystone XL,” the company wrote.

Spokesman Mark Cooper said TransCanada was not withdrawing its application. Instead, he said, “We are asking the State Department to suspend a decision.”

A State Department official said the agency was reviewing the request.

The move by TransCanada appeared to confirm speculation that the company hopes to push off a decision until the next administration because it fears Obama will reject the pipeline. Hours before TransCanada announced its request, the White House said it expected Obama to make a decision about the pipeline “before the end of his administration,” though it did not specify when.

The request also reflects a remarkable turnabout by TransCanada, which has spent years complaining of delays in the process only now to request one itself.

Last month, after meeting stiff legal resistance from landowners in Nebraska, the company decided to withdraw its plans to use a special state law that would allow it to exercise eminent domain to seize land for its preferred pipeline route. The company instead applied for a permit through the Nebraska Public Service Commission, a process that could take a year.

The company referred to those events in its letter to Kerry, in effect claiming that the legal opposition to how TransCanada was operating in Nebraska should prevent a federal decision on the pipeline in general that could go against it. It said a previous legal challenge to the project last year had caused uncertainty that prompted the State Department to temporarily suspend its review.

“We submit that, in the current circumstances, a similar suspension of the review process would be appropriate,” the company wrote. “In order to allow time for certainty regarding the Nebraska route, TransCanada requests that the State Department pause in its review of the Presidential Permit application for Keystone XL.”

The pipeline would carry more than 800,000 barrels of crude oil a day from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, across the U.S. border south to Gulf Coast refineries. Supporters say the project would boost jobs and contribute to energy security. Environmentalists contend it would increase emission of greenhouse gases.

The price of oil has plummeted dramatically since the pipeline was proposed, and the oil industry has pulled back from many large projects. Royal Dutch Shell recently announced it would abandon its effort to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean “for the foreseeable future.”

Even as TransCanada requested a delay, opponents of the project urged the administration to reject the project anyway.

“Today, tomorrow or next year, the answer will be the same: Keystone XL is a bad deal for America, our climate, and our economy,” Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmental activist and Democratic donor, said in a statement Monday. “Secretary Kerry should reject TransCanada’s request for delay, and President Obama should immediately reject the Keystone XL pipeline once and for all.”

Obama has long argued that he would judge the pipeline based on whether it accelerates the effects of climate change, and secondarily on whether it would significantly affect how much Americans pay for energy.

“We’re not going to authorize a pipeline that benefits largely a foreign company if it can’t be shown that it is safe and if it can’t be shown that overall it would not contribute to climate change,” he said at a town hall meeting this year.

A top official in the Environmental Protection Agency told the State Department in a letter this year that tar sands crude “represents a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions” over conventional crude, and that Keystone XL could lead to expanded production of greenhouse gases. The letter was seen as providing potential cover for the president to reject the pipeline.

Opponents of the project have been increasingly confident that the president would ultimately reject it, but Obama has suggested that its political boosters and to some degree its detractors have overstated its potential effects.

“I’ve just tried to give this perspective,” he told reporters in December.

Although TransCanada’s request may free Obama from a politically thorny decision, the issue is not likely to go away for candidates in the 2016 presidential race.

Keystone XL long ago evolved into shorthand among conservatives as an example of liberal overreach. Some Republicans have cited the Obama administration’s long-simmering decision-making on the pipeline as an example of how it stifled potential job-creating projects to advance its environmental agenda.

While Republican presidential contenders have expressed support for Keystone XL, Democratic candidates have argued against it.

Hillary Rodham Clinton announced in September that she would oppose the project after months of silence on an issue she had confronted during her time as secretary of State.

“It is imperative that we look at the Keystone pipeline for what I believe it is: a distraction from the important work we have to do to combat climate change and, unfortunately from my perspective, one that interferes with our ability to move forward,” she told voters in Iowa.

Her main rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, also opposes Keystone.

Credo Action, a liberal activist group, called TransCanada’s request Monday a “desperate” attempt to prevent Obama from blocking the project altogether.

“This is President Obama’s decision, and he shouldn’t cave to a foreign oil company trying to twist his arm into punting it to future presidents,” Elijah Zarlin, Credo’s climate campaign director, said in a statement.

But Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a North Dakota Democrat who supports the project, expressed frustration at how Keystone had been conflated “into the foremost emotional and overly politicized issue.”

“Halting a basic infrastructure expansion project will not make this country more energy efficient or independent, but it does set a foreboding precedent about our ability to achieve those goals,” she said.
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(Yardley reported from Seattle and Memoli from Washington. Staff writer Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.)

Photo: Pipes for Transcanada Corp’s planned Keystone XL oil pipeline are pictured in Gascoyne, North Dakota in this November 14, 2014 file photo. REUTERS/Andrew Cullen/Files