Obama rejects request to build Keystone XL oil pipeline

Environmentalists argued that approving Keystone, which would have transported about 800,000 barrels of petroleum product a day from the Canadian oil sands to the USA gulf coast, would have done significant damage to the environment.

Senator John Hoeven, a Republican of oil-producing North Dakota, said TransCanada would be able to challenge the decision under worldwide trade agreements such as NAFTA or the World Trade Organization.

“We see it as an opportunity to reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern countries and start using resources from Canada”, said Dickens. What makes this historic is that no president has ever considered climate change in rejecting a project before. GOP projections about the number of jobs that would be created are misleading. In fact, Keystone was mostly just another energy pipeline in a nation that’s already crisscrossed by more than 150,000 miles of them, one that took on disproportionate importance as the debate dragged on. The administration says other potential routes through Nebraska needed to be studied.

At the end of the Obama administration’s speed-of-tar deliberations on the Keystone XL pipeline, even the president acknowledged that the project was not especially important to the environment or the economy. He said TransCanada will review its options, including possibly filing a new application.

“Years of independent analysis have clearly shown the project would not exacerbate carbon pollution”.

“It’s become painfully clear that the president is more interested in appeasing deep-pocketed special interests and extremists than helping tens of thousands of Americans who could have benefited from Keystone’s good jobs”, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Friday. “A strong energy economy is critical to our country’s economic success and our national security, and I will continue to support safe, common sense investments that strengthen our economy”. Wall again said he wasn’t surprised by Obama’s decision, but still found the decision puzzling. Obama vetoes the bill days later.

President Obama’s denial of the proposed 1,179-mile pipeline comes as the president is seeking to build an ambitious legacy of climate change.

The State Department had determined that Keystone wouldn’t significantly affect carbon emission levels.

In the November 7 front-page article “Obama rejects Keystone XL pipeline permit ,” the chief executive of the company that promoted the pipeline complained that “misplaced symbolism was chosen over merit and science”. “In no way was the pipeline in America’s national interest”.