Environmentalists have urged President Obama to block the Keystone XL pipeline, which they argue will contribute to global warming by developing Canadian tar sands oil.
But critics are skeptical that stopping Keystone will prevent drilling for tar sands oil.
“Oil will get to market,” Canadian ambassador to the U.S. Gary Doer told an audience at a breakfast hosted by Bloomberg, adding that Keystone would reduce the cost of transporting oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Keystone supporters argue that without the pipeline, tar sands oil will have to get to the marketplace through less efficient means. Alberta has one of the largest tar sands deposits in the world, and Bloomberg reported that even with the Keystone pipeline, it will be hard to carry the massive amounts of oil that will come out of U.S. shale and Canadian tar sands.
“Keystone will help alleviate the lack of pipeline infrastructure, but only temporarily,” David Bouckhout, a senior commodity strategist at TD Securities told Bloomberg. “Growth of supply on both sides of the border, Bakken and Canadian supply, will outpace what Keystone’s capacity will provide in likely two to three years.”
“It gets to market with pipelines,” Doer said. “It will get to market by trains. It will get there by trucks. It will get to India, it will get to China and it will continue to have the opportunity to go to U.S. refineries, which create a lot of jobs for the United States for the manufacturing sector on the U.S. Gulf Coast.”
The State Department found that the Keystone pipeline would not have a significant impact on global warming, since tar sands oil would be developed even without the pipeline’s approval. But the department also found that U.S. energy needs could be met through the increased use of rail transportation and existing pipelines.
“It’s not true that this development will happen no matter what,” Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune said on Fox Business. “It’s also true that if we want to have a shot at arresting climate change and stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions, we can’t be investing in the dirtiest fuel source on the planet.”
The Environmental Protection Agency, however, attacked the State Department’s review of the pipeline, calling it “insufficient.” The agency argued that the review “does not provide a detailed analysis of the Keystone Corridor Alternative routes, which would parallel the existing Keystone Pipeline and likely further reduce potential environmental impacts to groundwater resources.”
The Obama administration announced it was unveiling a plan to combat global warming this summer, which could coincide with a decision on the pipeline.
However, environmentalists warn that approving the pipeline in exchange for pursuing more aggressive greenhouse regulations is a nonstarter.
“You can’t take big steps forward … and take this big step backward,” said League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski.
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