Sticking Our Head In Tar Sands
Energy Policy: The administration plans to study rerouting the Keystone XL pipeline until after next year's election, delaying needed jobs and energy. By that time, Canada's oil will be on its way to China.
That the American people are merely human sacrifices on the altar of environmentalism is seen by Thursday's announcement by the State Department that it has caved in to greenie demands that the Keystone XL pipeline intended to bring Canadian tar sands oil to the American market be rerouted around an aquifer that supplies water to eight states.
The process will take at least a year, kicking the oil can down the road past the November 2012 election. It is our fear that if President Obama is re-elected, the project will be scuttled permanently. That may be a moot point because as we have noted Canada is quite ready to run a pipeline to its West Coast and send its tar sands oil to an energy-hungry China.
Political considerations weighed heavily in the decision by an administration in which re-election trumps everything else, whether it be rising energy prices or the need for jobs. Environmentalists had warned the administration they might find other things to do in 2012 if Keystone XL was approved.
"This is not just about LCV (League of Conservation Voters), which spent nearly $1 million to help elect Obama in 2008, or any other group that engages in electoral politics in the upcoming election," said Tiernan Sittenfeld, the league's senior vice president for government affairs, in a not-so-veiled threat.
"It's about people out there who care deeply about the environment, how much they volunteer, how many doors they knock on, how much they contribute directly," Sittenfeld added. "We have LCV supporters who maxed out in the Obama campaign in 2008 who have told us they are not going to give this time around if the president approves this pipeline."
Ironically, a number of unions, a major part of the Democratic base, are backing the project, including the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the International Union of Operating Engineers, the Teamsters, the Laborers' International Union, the Building & Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, and the United Association of Plumbers & Pipe Fitters for the U.S. and Canada. They want the jobs.
Subscribe to the IBD Editorials PodcastThe Keystone XL pipeline would carry as much as 700,000 barrels of oil a day, doubling the capacity of an existing pipeline operated by TransCanada in the upper Midwest. The 36-inch pipeline carrying oil derived from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, to Gulf Coast refineries would create about 20,000 construction and manufacturing jobs, union jobs, that will increase the personal income of American workers by $6.5 billion.
According to the Energy Policy Research Foundation, TransCanada "is looking to expand the Keystone XL capability by offering Bakken oil producers located in Montana and North Dakota a chance to link into the pipeline and send their crude to the Gulf Coast refineries for the first time."
Joe Oliver, Canada's natural resource minister, recently told Reuters that if the pipeline wasn't approved "we'll simply have to intensify our efforts to sell the oil elsewhere."
That elsewhere is China. As we have noted, Sinopec, a Chinese state-controlled oil company, has a stake in a $5.5 billion plan to build the Northern Gateway Pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific Coast province of British Columbia.
Environmentalists say the pipeline would endanger the Ogallala aquifer in Nebraska and other states along the route. Yet they ignore the fact that 50,000 miles of pipeline already crisscrosses the U.S., including Nebraska. The technology is neither new nor unsafe. One of these is the Keystone 1 pipeline, which already carries crude from the oil sands.
America needs reliable energy and jobs. President Obama needs campaign donations and foot soldiers.
Unfortunately, he has once again chosen self-interest over the national interest.
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