Obama faces pressure to decide on Keystone pipeline
Pivotal call will have to favour job growth or the environment
WASHINGTON— President Barack Obama faces mounting pressure as he embarks on a second term over a decision he had put off during his re-election campaign: whether to approve the $7 billion proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline between the U.S. and Canada.
On its surface, it’s a choice between the promise of economic growth with more jobs and environmental concerns.
But it’s also become a proxy for a much broader fight over U.S. energy consumption and climate change, amplified by an election that was all about the economy.
Environmental activists and oil producers alike are looking to Obama’s decision as a harbinger of what he’ll do on climate and energy in the next four years. Both sides are holding out hope that, freed from the political constraints of re-election, the president will side with them on this and countless related issues down the road. “The broader climate movement is absolutely looking at this administration’s Keystone XL decision as areally significant decision to signal that dirty fuels are not acceptable in the U.S.,” Danielle Droitsch, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defence Council, said. Once content with delays that have so far kept the pipeline from moving forward at full speed, opponents of Keystone XL have launched protests in recent weeks at the White House and in Texas urging Obama to nix the project outright. Meanwhile, support for the pipeline appears to be picking up steam on Capitol Hill. But Obama has shown little urgency about the pipeline, which would carry crude oil about 1,700 miles (2,735 kilometres) from western Canada to Texas Gulf Coast refineries. The pipeline requires State Department approval because it crosses an international boundary. The pipeline became an issue in the campaign, and Obama put it on hold while a plan was worked out to avoid routing it through Nebraska’s environmentally sensitive Sandhills region. TransCanada, the company applying to build it, revised the route, but that caused the lengthy environmental review process to start over.
In the meantime, the company split the project into two parts, starting construction in August on a southern segment between Oklahoma and Texas even as it waits for approval for the northern segment that crosses the Canadian border.
Although the lower leg didn’t require Obama’s sign-off, he gave it his blessing in March anyway, irking environmental activists who see the pipeline as a slap to efforts to reduce oil consumption and fend off climate change.