Obama administration delays action on Keystone XL
A
worker walks through the TransCanada Corp. Houston Lateral Project pipe
yard in Mont Belvieu, Texas, U.S., on Wednesday, March 5, 2014. (Scott
Dalton/Bloomberg)
The State Department said the agencies needed more time to respond in light of a Nebraska court ruling that struck down legislation that authorized Gov. Dave Heineman’s approval of the pipeline’s route through the state.
“Agencies need additional time based on the uncertainty created by the on-going litigation in the Nebraska Supreme Court which could ultimately affect the pipeline route in that state,” the State Department said in a statement.
But the legal uncertainty is not likely to disappear any time soon. Nebraska has appealed the district court ruling, and activists say a final decision by the state supreme court could be almost a year away.
A State Department official told reporters it was “important” to get clarity on the pipeline’s path through Nebraska, since the route was central to a statutorily required environmental study of the project completed earlier this year as well as the agencies’ review.
“If there are changes to the route, it could have implications for the environmental, socioeconomic, cultural and other impacts that agencies are seeking to evaluate,” the official said. “We are prudently recognizing that the facts that agencies need to assess and analyze could change, and rather than preemptively asking agencies to give us all those comments now, we’re trying to get a better understanding of what that route might be.”
The indefinite delay scraps a mid-May deadline for the agencies to comment on whether TransCanada Corp.’s proposed pipeline is in the “national interest.”
It also buys time for the Obama administration to grapple with the heated politics surrounding the project, which has emerged as a major issue for some Senate Democrats seeking reelection.
The State Department said it would also use the extra time to continue reviewing about 2.5 million comments filed by the public earlier this year. It previously took the State Department months to wade through some 1.1 million comments filed at an earlier stage in the review process.
The decision disappointed pipeline supporters in the oil industry and on Capitol Hill as well as environmentalists who have long argued the project would exacerbate climate change. Keystone XL backers accused President Barack Obama of playing politics with the pipeline.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, called the delay “shameful.”
“With tens of thousands of American jobs on the line and our allies in Eastern Europe looking for energy leadership from America, it’s clear there is little this administration isn’t willing to sacrifice for politics,” Boehner said in a statement.
And Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, in a tough reelection contest in Louisiana, said the decision “amounts to nothing short of an indefinite delay of Keystone pipeline” that is “irresponsible, unnecessary and unacceptable.”
“By making it clear that they will not move the process forward until there is a resolution in a lawsuit in Nebraska, the administration is sending a signal that the small minority who oppose the pipeline can tie up the process in court forever,” Landrieu added.
Although the State Department’s decision is a victory for some Nebraska landowners who have battled TransCanada’s plans for installing the pipeline in the state, it rattled some environmentalists pressing the Obama administration to make a swift and decisive ruling against Keystone XL.
Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, and a major leader in the movement against Keystone XL, dryly noted the politics at stake and the timing of the announcement, falling late on the Friday before Easter.
“It’s as if our leaders simply don’t understand that climate change is happening in real time — that it would require strong, fast action to do anything about it,” McKibben said. “While we’re at it, the State Department should also request that physics delay heat-trapping operations for a while, and that the El Nino scheduled for later this spring be pushed back to after the midterms.”
Administration officials insisted politics weren’t at play.
“There’s no intent to delay the process,” the State Department official said. “The intent is to be able to ensure that the analyses we do are based on a route that is fundamental to our review process and that the analysis and the commentary that we get from the (other agencies) is indeed relevant to the real project that could potentially move ahead.”
Environmentalists say the $5.4 billion pipeline would unleash development of Canada’s oil sands, by linking the energy development in Alberta with the crude hub in Cushing, Okla., and ultimately giving the product a new route to the Gulf Coast market.
Because the oil sands development generally relies on strip mining or techniques involving steam, the resulting bitumen extracted from Alberta is often criticized as having a higher carbon footprint than alternative crudes when evaluated over its entire life cycle, from production to combustion.
But pipeline supporters insist the bitumen extracted from Canada’s oil sands has roughly the same carbon emissions as other heavy crudes it would likely displace in Gulf Coast refineries. And they cite the State Department’s own conclusions that transporting the oil sands crude by rail to the Gulf Coast would be worse for the climate.
The move may accelerate efforts in Congress to push legislation forcing the administration to make a final decision on Keystone XL, though a similar tactic backfired in 2012, ultimately prompting the Obama administration to rule against the project.
TransCanada Corp. CEO Russ Girling called the delay “inexplicable.”
“Our view remains that the current 90-day national interest determination process that is now underway should not be impacted by the Nebraska lower court ruling since the approved re-route remains valid during appeal,” Girling said in a statement.
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