Maine Delegation Weighs in on Keystone XL

CBC News reported that US President Barack Obama has rejected TransCanada’s (TSX:TRP, NYSE:TRP) application to build the Keystone XL pipeline after a seven years saga.

Whitehouse said the president’s decision is a first big win for environmentalists who have worked hard to stop the project. “I’d much rather be buying oil from our friends in North Dakota and our friends in Canada than the Iranians, and I think this president and this secretary of state are going to have a lot of explaining to do”.

Obama told Trudeau about the decision personally by phone, expressing a similar sentiment about its impact on diplomatic relations.

In comparison, the additional carbon produced by shipping oil from Canada through the United States via the Keystone pipeline was only 18.7 million metric tons.

America is “leading by example”, he said, and approving the Keystone XL pipeline “would have undercut this global leadership”. Not only would a mammoth pipeline from the tar sands of Canada to the refineries of the Gulf Coast have carried 830,000 barrels of toxic crude oil a day through the United States heartland, but it would have encouraged a particularly dirty form of oil extraction that could exacerbate climate change. “Rhetoric won out over reason”, said TransCanada CEO Russ Girling.

“We are extremely disappointed that President Obama succumbed to domestic political pressure and rejected the Keystone XL pipeline”.

“Given the facts of the project as canvassed by the U.S. State Department, this decision is more about USA domestic politics than it is about good environmental policy”.

He also noted the Liberal party promised during the election campaign to modernize the National Energy Board’s review process, including having upstream carbon emissions included in environmental assessments for energy projects like pipelines. Its proponents could challenge the decision in court and its construction could yet be approved if a Republican is elected president next year.

Both sides saw the Keystone rejection as a major symbolic step, a sign that the president was willing to risk angering a bipartisan majority of lawmakers in the pursuit of his environmental agenda.

A senior State Department official said TransCanada, the company looking to build the pipeline, could potentially reapply for a presidential permit under the next administration. And he said it wouldn’t have been a long-term job-creator.