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Keystone Opponents Vow Civil Disobedience, Vigils Starting Monday

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Photo Credit: REUTERSEnvironmentalists and other opponents of the Keystone XL Pipeline are ramping up their opposition to the project following the release Friday of a largely favorable State Department report — vowing to hold vigils, jump into the November elections and even perform acts of civil disobedience.

The report raising no major environmental concerns bolster the hopes of the oil industry, some union groups, congressional Republicans and others that President Obama will soon approve the $7 billion project, after a roughly five year wait.

They say the Canada-to-Texas pipeline will create tens of thousands of jobs and make the United States less dependent on foreign oil.

However, within hours of the release of the report, opponents were pressing forward with a lawsuit to challenge the project, public protests and an effort to inject the issue into this fall’s elections.

Among the critics is a coalition of landowners and environmentalists that says there is still cause for denying a federal permit.

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Keystone XL Won’t Worsen Climate, State Dept. Study Finds

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Photo Credit: shannonpatrick17The proposed Keystone XL pipeline cleared a key hurdle today with a government study that found its impact on the climate would be minimal, which supporters said meets President Barack Obama’s test for allowing the project to be built.

In its final environmental review, the U.S. State Department found the Canada-U.S. oil pipeline would not greatly increase carbon emissions because the oil sands in Alberta will be developed anyway.

The study, while not the final word, is important because Obama has said he wouldn’t approve Keystone if it would exacerbate carbon pollution. Now the pipeline’s fate comes down to broader questions about whether the project is in the U.S. national interest, weighing matters such as energy needs and diplomatic relations.

“We are one step closer toward approval of the Keystone XL pipeline,” Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a North Dakota Democrat and pipeline supporter, said in a statement. “Not only is it unacceptable, but it’s embarrassing that we cannot approve a pipeline application in the time it took us to fight World War II.”

TransCanada Corp. (TRP) applied more than five years ago for a permit to build the pipeline through the U.S. heartland, connecting the oil sands with refineries along the coast of Texas and Louisiana. It’s planned 830,000-barrel-a-day capacity would represent a fraction of U.S. oil imports, though the $5.4 billion project has spawned a multimillion-dollar lobbying fight and is forcing Obama to choose between angering an ally in Canada or his supporters in the environmental movement.

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Al Gore: Keystone Pipeline an ‘Atrocity’

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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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Continued Support for Keystone XL Pipeline

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Most Americans (65%) continue to favor building the Keystone XL pipeline, perhaps the most politically contentious energy issue in Barack Obama’s second term. Yet when it comes to another issue making headlines – a proposal to tighten greenhouse gas emissions from power plants – the public favors stricter limits, by exactly the same margin as the Keystone pipeline (65% to 30%).

Opinions on these two hotly debated issues underscore the complexity of public attitudes on U.S. energy policy. Support for increasing energy production from some traditional sources remains strong: 58% favor increased offshore oil and gas drilling in U.S. waters.

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Yet over the past year, opposition to the drilling process known as fracking has increased, as has opposition to nuclear power. Just 38% favor promoting the increased use of nuclear power while 58% are opposed, the highest level of opposition since the question was first asked in 2005.

The national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted Sept. 4-8 among 1,506 adults, finds that, as with other energy-related issues, there is a sharp partisan divide on the Keystone pipeline. But while an overwhelming majority of Republicans (82%) favor construction of the pipeline, so too do 64% of independents and about half of Democrats (51%).

President Obama’s decision about whether to go ahead with the pipeline is expected in the next few months. Environmental groups staunchly oppose the project, while GOP lawmakers are stepping up pressure on Obama to approve it.

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Insanity of Environmentalists’ Opposition to Keystone Pipeline Revealed in Last Week’s Canadian Explosion

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Photo Credit: Paul Chiasson/APAs environmental disasters go, the explosion Saturday of a runaway train that destroyed much of the Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic, about 20 miles from the Maine border, will probably go down the memory hole.

It lacks the correct moral and contains an inconvenient truth.

Not that the disaster lacks the usual ingredients of such a moral. The derailed 72-car train belonged to a subsidiary of Illinois-based multinational Rail World, whose self-declared aim is to “promote rail industry privatization.” The train was carrying North Dakota shale oil (likely extracted by fracking) to the massive Irving Oil refinery in the port city of Saint John, to be shipped to the global market. At least five people were killed in the blast (a number that’s likely to rise) and 1,000 people were forced to evacuate. Quebec’s environment minister reports that some 100,000 liters (26,000 gallons) of crude have spilled into the Chaudière River, meaning it could reach Quebec City and the St. Lawrence River before too long.

Environmentalists should be howling. But this brings us to the inconvenient truth.

The reason oil is moved on trains from places like North Dakota and Alberta is because there aren’t enough pipelines to carry it. The provincial governments of Alberta and New Brunswick are talking about building a pipeline to cover the 3,000-odd mile distance. But last month President Obama put the future of the Keystone XL pipeline again in doubt, telling a Georgetown University audience “our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.”

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Canadian Officials Make Climate Case In DC Ahead Of Keystone Pipeline Decision

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Photo Credit: rcboddenAlberta’s provincial government is trying to burnish its image on climate change as top Canadian officials make the case for U.S. approval of the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline.

“Even though we have had a presence here for some time, I don’t think we have really communicated as effectively as we need to on this,” Alberta’s Premier Alison Redford said in an interview at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C. on Saturday.

Redford and her environment minister, Diana McQueen, are in D.C. this weekend for meetings during the annual National Governors Association summit, which brings together U.S. governors and Obama administration officials.

The visit arrives as green groups are pressing the White House to scuttle the Alberta-to-Texas pipeline, a demand that was the focus of a major climate change rally in Washington on Feb. 17.

Advocates of the pipeline, which would bring Canadian oil sands and oil to Gulf Coast refineries, have long made their case on economic and energy security grounds.

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Green Groups Brave the Cold to Protest ‘Global Warming,’ Seek to Kill Keystone XL Pipeline

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photo credit: tarsandsactionEnvironmental groups gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Sunday and marched on the White House for a climate change rally largely aimed at pressuring President Obama to reject the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline.

activists attended the rally, where speakers portrayed the battle over the pipeline as a struggle between grassroots green groups and deep-pocketed special interests.

“They’ve got the lobbyists. They’ve got the super-PACs. They made the campaign contributions. They’ve got this town in their pockets — they have got the situation under control. And then you show up. And then we show up. And we change the game,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told the crowd not long before it marched on the White House.

Obama will decide whether the project goes forward because it crosses national boundaries. The pipeline would bring fossil fuels from Canadian tar sands fields to the Gulf Coast. Environmentalists are painting Obama’s upcoming decision as the litmus test for whether he plans to make good on recent comments about tackling climate change.

Activists at Sunday’s rally said approving the pipeline would taint Obama’s record on climate change. They said they hoped the demonstration would give the president the will to nix Keystone, even when a majority of both the House and the Senate want it built.

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Perfect Response to Obama’s Claim Regarding Pipeline Encircling Earth: “You Didn’t Build That!”

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Leases and production are down on federal lands, the EPA is waging war on coal, and as for building enough pipelines to encircle the earth, we’d settle for just one from Canada to the Gulf.

When President Obama, in responding Tuesday to Mitt Romney’s chiding about failing to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, claimed that his administration has added enough new oil and gas pipelines to “encircle the Earth and then some,” we felt a perfect response from Romney would have been, “You didn’t build that.”

In fact, energy companies have built some 55,000 miles of pipeline, including one from Canada, mostly requiring only state and local permits, and they have operated with an admirable safety record.

Keystone XL would be just as safe, creating 20,000 jobs up front. But Obama’s blockage has been about catering to his environmentalist base, not reducing gas prices or creating jobs.

Keystone XL is part of Romney’s plan for North American energy independence. As the Institute for Energy Research points out, Energy Information Administration (EIA) figures released last week reveal that the U.S. buys an average of 869,000 barrels a day of oil from the Venezuela of thuggish President Hugo Chavez.

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