No to Keystone disappointing for Canada-U.S. relations: Wall

“America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change”, Obama said in comments from the White House. Omaha attorney Dave Domina said Friday that landowners will continue their court challenge of a law that allowed former Gov. Dave Heineman to approve a pipeline route in 2013. “And that’s the biggest risk we face, not acting”. Back in 2008, TransCanada first applied for a permit to build a pipeline that would help carry 830,000 barrels of crude oil per day from Canada and North Dakota down to refineries on the Gulf Coast. But such a move would have pushed the final decision on Keystone past 2016, and leaving it to Obama’s successor. “I previously expressed my concerns to Secretary of State John Kerry about the Portland-Montreal Pipeline and specifically the use of tar sands oil, which is more hard to clean up following spills than traditional oil and generates more carbon dioxide”. During his announcement Obama said both sides of the debate had overstated their claims.

“The pipeline would not make a meaningful long-term contribution to our economy”. I think it takes away from America’s energy independence and I think it reduced our ability for good paying jobs in this country. Severin Borenstein, with the U.C. Berkeley Energy Institute said, “It’s not really going to change either the price of gasoline or the amount of greenhouse gasses we release”. “In fact, gas prices have already been falling”, the president said. It’s down a dollar over two years ago.

August 26, 2011 – The State Department issues its final environmental impact statement determining “there would be no significant impacts to most resources along the proposed project corridor”.

The Department of State admitted as much in its “Record of Decision and National Interest Determination”, stating that the reason for their rejection of the pipeline had more to do with perception than reality.

The Associated Press reports that this is according to three sources familiar with the decision who aren’t authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.