Obama’s ‘Very Odd’ Decision To Reject Keystone Is More About — AP Reporter

That’s something he felt would hurt the US’s leadership role in the upcoming United Nations’ Conference on Climate Change later this month.

A sign in front of TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline facilities in Hardisty, Alberta, Canada.

They have accused the Obama administration of improperly stalling on the issue. Given the overwhelming case for approval, the seven-years-long delay and today’s stunning disapproval, we expect manufacturers will not soon forget the message sent by the Obama Administration today.

Obama acknowledged that if the pipeline was built, it wouldn’t “significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution” in Canada.

As Obama himself noted, Keystone “would neither be a silver bullet for the economy … nor the express lane to climate disaster proclaimed by others”.

However, Obama claims that the number of jobs the pipeline would have created was exaggerated and in his statement at the White House said that “The pipeline would not make a meaningful longterm contribution to our economy”.

This decision was expected, but woefully wrongheaded, designed not for strategic or environmental reasons, but primarily to improve Obama’s bargaining position at the upcoming United Nations climate change summit meeting in Paris.

The Keystone XL oil pipeline may be the most famous length of pipe in the world despite the fact that not a foot of the proposed 1,179 miles of it has actually been laid.

Secretary of State John Kerry said much of the same. “This will raise prices for America, not lower prices, and it will have a bigger environmental impact, a negative impact”. The proposed project was incompatible with solving climate change.

Like a game of pipeline whack-a-mole, a bid by TransCanada Corp., to suspend its controversial, north-south Keystone XL pipeline proposal has elevated the west-east Energy East pipeline plan to the top of Canada’s political agenda.

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”.

“We will review our options to potentially file a new application for border-crossing authority… and will now analyze the stated rationale for the denial”.

The State Department’s January 31, 2014, Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement also concluded that the total annual GHG emissions transporting oil by rail to the Gulf Coast is about 42 percent greater compared to transporting that same oil through Keystone XL.