There was an editorial in our local paper about the Keystone pipeline. I live in the state that is most affected by the pipeline, I have no problem with it. But the Obama adminstration has been sitting on it for years now and they still have no clue what to do.
Getting caught up in U.S. presidential politics can be risky for any foreign government. For the government of friendly, reliable Canada, it's been an ongoing exercise in frustration. Canada is blessed with massive oil reserves in and around its landlocked province of Alberta. To make the most of its oil-sands wealth, Canada needs to get the product to market. America, naturally, is the handiest potential customer.
The Keystone XL Pipeline would bring Canadian oil from Alberta to Nebraska, where it would continue on to U.S. refineries near the Gulf of Mexico. Keystone would go a long way toward solving the problem of what to do with all that potentially lucrative and useful oil piling up in the northern reaches of North America. The U.S. could use it, that's for sure.
In a sop to its eco-green political base, though, the administration of President Barack Obama blocked the Keystone pipeline in January. Now the project is under review again at the U.S. State Department, which has jurisdiction because the pipeline would cross our border with Canada. Last week, the diplomats announced plans to make a final decision on the project by the first quarter of 2013 — a date that not coincidentally puts off the issue until after the Nov. 6 election.
How convenient for the president and his re-election strategists!
To everyone else, though, this is ridiculous: The project has been under review for more than four years. The only remaining question involves a short stretch of what would be a large-scale, job-creating boon to the nation's energy infrastructure. The administration owes TransCanada, the company seeking to build the pipeline, a timely decision.
Consider how the latest roadblock came to be: The original route of the pipeline crossed a portion of the sparsely populated Nebraska Sandhills that sits over the massive Ogallala aquifer. Fear-mongers who opposed the project — mostly because they oppose the use of fossil fuels in general — managed to gin up concern that an important underground source of fresh water would be at risk of pollution.
It's a phony issue. More than 15,000 miles of pipeline already crisscross the aquifer in seven states, with no dire consequences to date. Keystone, engineered to the most modern standards, likely would be the safest of all.
Because of the political scrutiny the project has endured, the pipeline is being overbuilt to guard against practically any foreseeable mishap. It would be buried extra-deep in the ground, for instance, and equipped with higher-than-normal numbers of remote-controlled shut-off valves. The company has agreed to a rigorous regimen of pipeline inspections — a costly exercise that would be better aimed at older, less-advanced systems. And pipelines, remember, are by far the safest way to move oil cross-country, much more so than rail or truck transport.
The facts hardly matter, however. TransCanada agreed to sidestep the bogus water fears by rerouting roughly 90 miles of pipeline. That small section is the only part that hasn't received minute inquiry from the affected states and the federal government. It simply shouldn't take the better part of a year to make a decision. We suspect, however, that no amount of diplomacy or common sense will get the job done before the election.
For a while, we thought high gasoline prices might do the trick. Republicans were gearing up this spring to channel public anger over sticker-shock at the pump into a call for action on Keystone. The recent decline in the cost of gas has bought the president some breathing room, unfortunately.
Yet the administration might have less room to maneuver than commonly supposed.
Canadian government officials and energy companies are seeking alternatives for bringing their nation's booming oil output to market. The Keystone XL bottleneck gives them a huge financial incentive to do so. Canadian crude sells at a discount of $20 or greater per barrel compared with the same oil in more accessible parts of the world. As the U.S. dithers, Canada is accelerating three separate pipeline proposals — two traveling westbound toward the Pacific coast, the other eastbound to a tanker port in Maine.
As a practical matter, those projects could divert oil supplies away from U.S. markets. Yet for Americans they are no substitute for Keystone XL. The U.S. Gulf Coast is home to dozens of refineries eager to replace declining imports from Mexico and Venezuela. The U.S. needs this pipeline as much as Canada does.