Professor’s Take: The Keystone pipeline debate may not be over

When President Obama rejected Keystone XL, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry, he said, “If we want to prevent the worst effects of climate change before it’s too late, the time to act is now”.

In his Keystone remarks, the president tried to imply the price of oil and gasoline have fallen during his term of office because of the policies of his administration. Protests and lobbying will now move from Washington to Ottawa. But Keystone XL’s demise, weeks before a United Nations conference on climate change in Paris, will make it easier for Mr Trudeau to forge a national consensus on climate policy and to portray Canada as a helpful partner at the global gathering. While the Keystone came to life, TransCanada proposed a slight extension, to the prevailing pipeline, now known as the Keystone XL, in order to aid and provide transportation of an additional 830,000 barrels of oil.

People often ask why gas prices at the pump are not cheaper.

But as Wall points out, it’s still very significant because having to sell at a lower price deprives oil companies the chance to create the capital to reinvest.

The objection of the President is reasonable, as the pipeline would interfere with Sandhills, which rests atop the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the most sensitive wetland ecosystems and freshwater reserves in the entire world.

Still, the environmentalists’ victory is not an empty one. Which raises a question: Why on earth did he spend seven years considering it, let alone take the unprecedented step of smiting it by presidential fiat?

Until, that is, Canada comes up with an alternative.

Numerous project’s backers have argued that pipeline or no, Canada will still extract and sell the environmentally damaging tar sands oil, so why stand in the way? His Liberal Party won four seats in Alberta in October’s election, matching its best showing since his father, Pierre, a long-serving prime minister, enacted an unpopular national energy programme in 1980. A break or leak in the pipeline would create a spill that would have a localized negative impact on the environment. We can not shut the tar sands down. The southern part of the project that’s been built – not requiring White House approval – has generated 5,000 temporary jobs.

Everyday we hear millions of people cry out about how our environment is at risk and how we must do something about it; even the government pleads the citizens to do something good and something “green” as often as they can. Another option is to increase the capacity of the existing TransMountain pipeline by almost threefold, to bring 890,000 barrels a day to Vancouver, an outlet to Asia. But the Can$1.35-billion (US$1-billion) project relies heavily on subsidies, and there is as yet no plan to make such projects economically viable moving forward, says Simon Dyer, regional director for Alberta at the Pembina Institute, an environmental think-tank in Calgary. It also needs consent from the more sceptical leaders of Ontario and Quebec.

The disputed stretch of the Keystone XL pipeline, by comparison, was slated to run for all of 875 miles through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska.

Our new ability to extract hydrocarbons from shale has also been a net win in the effort to cut carbon dioxide emissions. The help from the American president ends there.