State Department Rejects Request to Pause Keystone XL Review

“President Obama should say this fails my climate test”, McKibben said.

The company said the $12-billion project is scheduled to be completed by 2020.

Trudeau is in favor of Keystone, though he has pledged to take more action on climate change than his conservative predecessor Stephen Harper.

The pipeline would carry nearly one-quarter of all Canada’s oil exports, but it needs a permit to cross the USA border to be connected with the southern leg that’s already flowing to Gulf of Mexico refineries. The request was seen by a few analysts as an attempt to circumvent an expected rejection by President Barack Obama, which the company denied.

TransCanada shares were last down 0.6 percent at C$44.82 in Toronto.

The Keystone XL project has undergone repeated federal and state reviews since TransCanada announced the project in 2008. But that was before crude’s drop lowered gasoline prices at the pump. “There’s no legal basis to do that”, John Kirby, a spokesman for the State Department, said November 5. “After such a long review process this was a ridiculous ploy from TransCanada”, said League of Conservation Voters Senior Vice President Tiernan Sittenfeld.

“I’m fairly confident in telling you that in the secretary’s view, respecting the process in this is respecting the time, and resources, and the energy, and effort that went into the review process to date”, Kirby said.

“This desperate move demonstrates how much the case for the troubled tar sands pipeline has deteriorated”, wrote Anthony Swift, NRDC’s Canada project director.

Calgary-based TransCanada had originally planned to build two ports for shipping crude overseas by tanker – one at the pipeline terminus in Saint John, New Brunswick, and the other in Cacouna, Quebec. An oil company recently shut down a project in Alberta, blaming market conditions and also the potential shortage of infrastructure to move Canada’s land-locked bitumen.

Many activists and progressive politicians criticized TransCanada for asking for the suspension, accusing the company of trying to drag things out until they could present the project to a friendlier Administration. As the cost of filling up fuel tanks has fallen, the debate has become irrelevant. Critics oppose the concept of tapping the Alberta oil sands, saying it requires huge amounts of energy and water and increases greenhouse gas emissions.

The White House declined to comment but hinted Tuesday that the administration would not be receptive to TransCanada’s request. A day earlier, the White House press secretary had cast doubt on the justification for halting the review.