Kerry has emboldened Keystone critics
They hope pipeline from Canada will die if senator’s appointed secretary of state
CALGARY — As a senator, John Kerry fought for sweeping climate-change legislation, called human-induced warming among the top challenges facing the U.S. and pushed for an international accord to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
That track record has emboldened critics of TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline, who want him to scuttle the remaining $5.3-billion portion of the project if he’s confirmed as secretary of state. Appearing Thursday at a hearing on his nomination before the Senate committee he chairs, Kerry was non-committal on the Canada-U.S. pipeline, though he called himself a “passionate advocate” for action on climate change.
“He’s made climate leadership a signature issue in his Senate career,” Erich Pica, president of environmental group Friends of the Earth, said in an interview Thursday. “At the State Department, Kerry has the ability to ensure the analysis that is done gives the president the full flavour of the global warming impacts from the pipeline.”
A rejection of the Keystone XL project would exacerbate a bottleneck of shipments from Alberta’s oilsands that has made Canadian heavy oil among the cheapest in the world.
The decision ultimately rests with President Barack Obama, who in his inaugural address this week pledged to act on climate change. Kerry’s influence may come as the State Department updates an environmental assessment originally criticized by green groups as inadequately weighing how the pipeline, which would carry bitumen from tars and sin Canada, may affect climate change.
“There is a statutory process with regards to the re- view and that is currently ongoing,” Kerry told the Senate foreign relations committee. “It will not be long before that comes across my desk, and I will make the appropriate judgments about it.”
Investors appear to be betting on Keystone approval, sending TransCanada shares to a record high this week. TransCanada, the country’s second-largest pipeline operator, has climbed 3.9 per cent since Kerry was nominated Dec. 21 and has advanced 4.1 per cent this year. It fell 0.3 per cent to $48.77 in Toronto Friday, after touching $49.11 on Jan. 21, the highest since it began trading more than 30 years ago. The Calgary-based company has gained 17 per cent in the last year versus a three per cent decline of peers on the S&P/TSX Energy Index.
Critics say the pipeline will promote mining of Canada’s oilsands, which produces more greenhouse gases than most conventional drilling. Keystone backers say the project will create jobs and make the U.S. less dependent on oil from less friendly places.
Blocking Keystone or even curtailing production from Canada’s oilsands would have a negligible impact on worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, TransCanada CEO Russ Girling said.
“A decision has to be made on the facts, not on rhetoric,” he said at a conference Thursday in Whistler, B.C. “It doesn’t matter who’s adjudicating those facts.”
Girling did not directly address the effect of Kerry’s potential appointment. He remains “optimistic” the pipeline plan will be approved.
This week, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, a Republican, approved TransCanada’s revised route through his state, leaving the Obama administration as the final hurdle. Obama rejected the pipeline last year after concerns were raised about its route through an environmentally sensitive area of Nebraska, and invited the company to reapply, which it has.
Keystone requires the State Department to sign off because it would cross the U.S.Canada border.
“There is no question this is the president’s decision,” Adam Kolton, the executive director of the National Wildlife Federation’s National Advocacy Center, said in an interview.
“With respect to Sen. Kerry, he’s like the Ted Williams of climate-change advocacy. I don’t think we could have someone at the secretary of state level whose advice and leadership would be better at addressing this issue than Sen. Kerry.”
Joe Romm, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based group that says it supports progressive public policies, said Obama’s embrace of climate action and Kerry’s nomination for secretary of state puts the odds Keystone is rejected at greater than 50-50.
“Kerry has invested more time and effort on climate than any other senator since Al Gore; he is a true climate hawk,” Romm wrote on a Jan. 23 blog post.
Kerry, while among the most forceful advocates for fighting climate change as a member of Congress, has said little on Keystone.
The foreign relations committee, which oversees the State Department, hasn’t held a hearing on Keystone.
Pica said Kerry and his staff made inquiries to the department about the project.
Environmentalists say their hopes for progress were raised anew when Obama pledged in his second inaugural Jan. 21 to “respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.”