Keystone coup de grâce — or is it?

If Rob Merrifield, Alberta’s outgoing envoy in Washington, is to be believed, Keystone XL, which would have become the 32nd oil pipeline to cross the U.S.-Canadian border, will be denied presidential approval “shortly.” After seven years, billions in investment and countless hours explaining, lobbying and debating the merits of the line, TransCanada Corp. will at least have a decision.

If Keystone XL is killed, history will remember U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision as at best a hollow victory. Certainly it will not shut down Alberta’s oilsands production; much of its 2.3 million barrels of crude per day will find its way across Canada and into the U.S. through trains and other pipelines, as it is now. What slowdown in production has occurred can probably be attributed as much to a $50 per barrel oil price as to tightening pipeline capacity.

If Obama had hoped to cement a legacy as a presidential environmental pioneer, then he has failed. The top source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. remains coalfired electricity generation. Indeed, the entire Alberta oilsands emit about as much carbon dioxide as does electricity generation in the state of Wyoming.

Instead, Obama will be better known to history for his colossal foreign affairs failings: his decision to prematurely pull out of Iraq just as the U.S. military was starting to stabilize the region; the “red line” he drew for Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad, forbidding the use of chemical weapons on his own people — a line that was instantly ignored; the half-hearted attempts to arm rebels across the region during the Arab Spring followed by years of neglect and inaction; and of course, the calamitous nuclear deal with Iran.

Add to that his inability to get much of his domestic agenda through Congress, largely due to his inability or unwillingness to assemble a bipartisan consensus in support: the traditional test of a president. Should Obama cancel Keystone XL, then it will look like what it is: a small and petty parting shot from a weak and weakened president. Indeed, if Merrifield is to be believed, Obama may yet find himself denied even that: with just four additional votes, the Senate could kill any attempt to veto a proKeystone bill.

Which leaves Merrifield understandably frustrated at being called home just at this very moment. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley campaigned on the notion that Keystone XL was a lost cause: Canadians have too little leverage to affect what had become a symbolic fight. This may have seemed an unreasonable assumption, given how protracted and emotional the process had become.

Yet it appears the issue is still very much in play. Alberta had already sunk an extraordinary amount of money and time into lobbying for Keystone XL before Notley was elected in May — perhaps she would have been better to see the game out to the very end, rather than be in such haste to pull her players off the field.