America: We Support Building Keystone
Photo Credit: Townhall
A new poll from Rasmussen Reports shows 61 percent of Americans support the approval of Keystone, a new high.
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DNC Chairwoman: Politics Didn’t Factor into Obama Keystone Pipeline Delay
Photo Credit: Mark Wilson / Getty Images
The State Department, which has been reviewing the environmental impact of a proposal to build an oil pipeline from Canada to refineries along the Gulf Coast, announced this week that it would postpone its decision on whether to approve the project.
Some Republicans who support the project accused Democrats and the White House of purposefully pushing back a ruling until after this year’s midterm elections — but Wasserman Schultz attempted Sunday to dismiss such a notion.
“The decision over the Keystone pipeline is complex and it has to be examined very carefully,” Wasserman Schultz said on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” “It affects multiple states.”
Because of the weight of the issue, Wasserman Schultz said, she wants “to make sure the right decision is arrived at and the president makes that decision carefully and doesn’t put politics in his decision.”
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‘Ridiculous’: Administration Punts On Keystone, Obama Faces Dem Revolt
Photo Credit: REUTERS
The Obama administration once again has punted on a final decision for the Keystone XL pipeline, announcing ahead of the holiday weekend it is extending a key review period indefinitely — a move that could push off a determination until after the midterm elections.
Republicans, as well as red-state Democrats who want the proposed Canada-to-Texas pipeline approved, slammed the administration for the delay. Democrats even threatened to find ways to go around the president to get the project approved.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous that this well over five year long process is continuing for an undetermined amount of time,” Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., said in a statement.
Republican Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry called the decision “shameful,” noting that another spring construction season will come and go without the project.
The administration had been in the middle of a 90-day review period for federal agencies assessing an environmental study from the State Department.
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Photo Credit: IJ Review
By Soopermexican.
While the media is obsessed with the Koch brothers this campaign season, a billionaire hedge fund manager from San Francisco just bought off the White House to the tune of $100 million in order to delay the Keystone XL pipeline decision.
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Video: Andrea Mitchell Warns Keystone Pipeline Would Ruin Obama’s ‘Climate Change Legacy’
Photo Credit: MRC On her 1 p.m. ET hour MSNBC show on Monday, host Andrea Mitchell warned that President Obama would endanger his reputation with left-wing environmentalists if he dared to approve the Keystone Pipeline: “It goes very much against the legacy, the climate change legacy of not only Barack Obama, but [Secretary of State] John Kerry has spent his whole life devoted to working on these environmental issues and all of his allies are really against this.” [Listen to the audio]
Mitchell began by observing that a new State Department report on the proposed oil pipeline “basically said there is going to be a bad effect on climate change whether they build this pipeline or not” and would give “some political cover to the President and Secretary Kerry if they want to go the route of building the pipeline.”
On Friday’s NBC Nightly News, Mitchell hyped environmentalist opposition to the project and efforts to discredit the newly-released study.
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Keystone Contractor’s Ties to Energy Groups Draw New Scrutiny
Photo Credit: AP
Climate activists have already complained about alleged conflicts of interest by the London-based firm Environmental Resources Management, a company that worked on a State Department draft study concluding that TransCanada’s Alberta-to-Texas pipeline would pose little risk to the environment. The department’s inspector general is also conducting a probe into possible conflicts of interest in the pipeline review process.
While a previous State Department investigation found no conflicts of interest, the latest information could further roil a debate that has already turned Keystone into a political headache for the Obama administration, a campaign issue for Republicans in 2014 and a source of tension between the U.S. and Canada.
Websites or promotional material of the Western Energy Alliance, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association all list ERM as a members. In addition, two top ERM staffers are listed on the boards of the Western States Petroleum Association — another coalition of energy interests that supports the Keystone pipeline network.
Greens had already seized on ERM’s membership in the powerful American Petroleum Institute, another supporter of the pipeline.
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Al Gore: Keystone Pipeline an ‘Atrocity’
Photo Credit: M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICOA fiery Al Gore urged President Barack Obama on Thursday to reject the Keystone XL oil pipeline, calling the controversial project an “atrocity.”
“This should be vetoed. It is an atrocity. It is a threat to our future,” the former vice president said during a Center for American Progress 10th anniversary event in Washington.
Gore criticized the Canadian oil sands that the pipeline would carry, arguing that approval of the project would be akin to a desperate drug addict looking for fresh veins.
“Junkies find veins in their toes when the ones in their arms and legs give out,” said Gore, a vocal climate advocate who has previously used the drug addiction metaphor to describe Keystone. “We are now at the point where we’re going after these ridiculously dirty and dangerous carbon-based fuels. And we’ve got to stop that.”
Gore delighted the progressive crowd at the CAP event, listing off a bevy of facts and figures about the threat of climate change.
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The Obama Administration Continues to Delay Keystone XL
Photo Credit: Daily Caller
For more than 1,800 days, the Obama administration has been analyzing whether the Keystone pipeline is in the national interest. The Department of State’s review of the pipeline found that it would create more than 42,000 jobs and not significantly impact global warming or the environment.
But that seems to be an outlier view within the Obama administration. Soon after the State Department released its review, the Environmental Protection Agency attacked it and said it needed to take a deeper look into the pipeline’s environmental and climate impacts.
More recently, the Department of Interior criticized the State Department’s review of Keystone, saying the project could harm wildlife along its proposed route.
“Given that the project includes not only constructing a pipeline but also related infrastructure, access roads, and power lines and substations, impacts to wildlife are not just related to project construction,” read the Interior comments on the pipeline review.
“Impacts to wildlife from this infrastructure will occur throughout the life of the project (i.e. operation and maintenance phases).”
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Canada Warns Obama: It’s Trains or the Keystone Pipeline
On 6 July, a Montreal, Maine & Atlantic train carrying 72 tank cars filled with oil exploded after its brakes apparently failed, sending it rolling into the small Quebec town of Lac-Megantic, where it derailed and then exploded. In the conflagration that followed, an estimated 47 people were killed.
Whether Canadians like it or not, the use of such trains has soared in recent years. The Railway Association of Canada reports that as recently as four years ago Canadian railways moved just 500 carloads of crude oil, but that number has now soared to about 140,000 carloads annually.
While currently only about three percent of Canadian crude is currently transported by rail, one industry predicts railway carriage of oil products rising to as high as 25 percent by 2035.
Now, in a breathtaking display of chutzpah, the Canadian ambassador to the U.S. is warning President Obama if he does not approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, then he can expect similar oil trains and even trucks to enter the U.S. Ambassador Gary Doer said, “His choice is to have it come down by a pipeline that he approves, or without his approval, it comes down on trains. That’s just the raw common sense of this thing, and we’ve been saying it for two years and we’ve been proven correct. At the end of the day, it’s trains or pipelines.”
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Obama Criticizes Keystone Pipeline, Takes Action to Reduce Production from Fracking
Photo Credit: CorbisBarack Obama expresses reservations about Keystone XL pipeline project
By Suzanne Goldenberg. Barack Obama has given the strongest indication to date that he holds reservations about the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, saying the project would not create many jobs and could raise gasoline prices.
In an interview with the New York Times, the president disputed a main justification for the pipeline – its economic benefits – and reaffirmed he would reject the project if it expanded carbon pollution.
The comments were seen by campaigners as evidence that Obama, in the wake of last month’s landmark climate change speech, was leaning towards rejecting the project.
Obama has been under growing pressure from campaigners, party donors, and Democrats in Congress to reject the pipeline, which would expand production from Canada’s tar sands.
He adopted some of their arguments in his comments on Saturday, knocking down pipeline supporters’ claims of a big jobs boost, saying Keystone would register little more than a “blip” on the employment rolls. Read more from this story HERE.
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GOP lawmaker warns Interior’s fracking rule could lead to cascade of new regs
By Ben Geman. A House Republican [Rep. Bill Flores (Texas)] seeking to thwart the Interior Department’s (DOI) regulation of fracking, the controversial oil-and-gas development method, said he’s trying to prevent what he believes will become a cascade of rules from multiple federal agencies…
“What concerns me about the DOI’s proposal is that it is the nose under the tent, if they can get in and say OK, we are only going to regulate where there states have no regulations or we feel like the regulations are not strong enough, then eventually you get a national standard over an area that they really don’t have the expertise to deal with and more importantly they don’t have the federal statutory authority to do it, and again, the states do a great job,” he said in the interview broadcast Sunday.
…Flores, a former oil-and-gas industry executive, said the Obama administration is “determined to try to regulate hydraulic fracturing” through multiple federal agencies. Read more from this story HERE.
Obama Will Use Nixon-Era Law to Fight Climate Change
Photo Credit: Daniel Acker
The result could be significant delays for natural gas- export facilities, ports for coal sales to Asia, and even new forest roads, industry lobbyists warn.
“It’s got us very freaked out,” said Ross Eisenberg, vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, a Washington-based group that represents 11,000 companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) and Southern Co. (SO) The standards, which constitute guidance for agencies and not new regulations, are set to be issued in the coming weeks, according to lawyers briefed by administration officials.
In taking the step, Obama would be fulfilling a vow to act alone in the face of a Republican-run House of Representatives unwilling to pass measures limiting greenhouse gases. He’d expand the scope of a Nixon-era law that was first intended to force agencies to assess the effect of projects on air, water and soil pollution.
“If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will,” Obama said last month during his State of the Union address. He pledged executive actions “to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.”
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