Keystone XL Pipeline rejection is in America’s best interest

President Barack Obama’s decision to veto the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada was a symbolic gesture that will have real consequences for the United States in foregone jobs and the loss of a readily available source of foreign oil.

The president claimed the pipeline project would have had a negligible impact on jobs and the economy.

Green America, with 200,000 individual members and 3,000 business members, has been a vocal opponent of the Keystone XL Pipeline project. Donnelly thinks that we should be investing our money in energy infrastructure projects here rather than spending hundreds of billions of dollars to purchase energy from overseas. But while tanker-car derailments typically cause more property damage, pipeline spills generally cause more damage to the environment. The Obama Administration has also introduced increased efficiency requirements for vehicles and pollution rules for coal-based electricity in the U.S. That likely would have undermined President Obama’s legacy in regards to energy policy.

“We are disappointed with the President’s decision to deny the Keystone XL application”, said Russ Girling, president and CEO, TransCanada, adding that “misplaced symbolism was chosen over merit and science-rhetoric won out over reason”.

The answer, of course, is that environmentalists decreed Keystone a symbol of global climate change and fought it as if it were the pipeline to the planet’s watery doom. It’s no wonder that in a poll early this year almost 60 percent of Americans favored building Keystone XL. He cited falling gas prices and focused on his priority of fighting climate change by cutting the use of fossil fuels.

After seven years of dithering on Keystone, the president said he was following the recommendation of Secretary of State John Kerry that the pipeline was not in the country’s national security interest, which he said includes being a global leader in the “climate change” campaign. The timing of the Keystone decision allows him to preserve a “global leadership” position on the issue of climate change and press other nations to do their part to reduce carbon emissions. There would only be 35 permanent jobs created from the pipeline, according to The NY Times. And a pipeline is a safer instrument to transmit the oil than trucks or trains, the other options. Many domestic refineries have been optimized to handle the type of heavy crude oil produced from Canada’s oil sands, and it is prohibitively expensive to switch them back to handle the lighter domestic crude being extracted from our onshore shale plays.

The Energy Information Administration, the government’s energy analysis arm, on Tuesday updated its country profile for Canada just days after the president killed the pipeline project that would have shipped tar sands oil over 1,500 miles to US refiners on the Gulf Coast.