The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Obama rejects Keystone pipeline
President: Move shows U.S. leads climate change fight.
Coral Davenport WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama announced Friday that he had rejected the request from a Canadian company to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline, ending a seven-year review that had become a symbol of the debate over his climate policies.
Obama’s denial of the proposed 1,179-mile pipeline, which would have carried 800,000 barrels a day of carbon-heavy petroleum from the Canadian oil sands to the Gulf Coast, comes as he seeks to build a legacy on climate change.
“America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change,’’ Obama said in remarks from the White House. “And frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership.’’
The move was made ahead of a major U.N. summit meeting on climate change in Paris in December, when Obama hopes to help broker a historic agreement committing the world’s nations to enacting new policies to counter global warming.
The once-obscure Keystone project became a political symbol amid broader clashes over energy, climate change and the economy. The rejection of a single oil infrastructure project will have little impact on efforts to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, but the pipeline plan gained an outsize profile after environmental activists spent years rallying against it in front of the White House and across the country, while conservatives urged its construction as a source of thousands of new jobs for Americans.
Obama said Friday that the pipeline has come to occupy what he called “an overinflated role in our political discourse.’’
“It has become a symbol too often used as a campaign cudgel by both parties rather than a serious policy matter,’’ he said. “And all of this obscured the fact that this pipeline would neither be a silver bullet for the economy, as was promised by some, nor the express lane to climate disaster proclaimed by others.’’
Many Democrats, particularly those in oil-producing states such as North Dakota, had joined Republicans in support of the project.
Environmental activists cheered the decision as a vindication of their influence.
“President Obama is the first world leader to reject a project because of its effect on the climate,’’ said Bill McKibben, founder of the activist group 350.org, which led the campaign against the pipeline. “That gives him new stature as an environmental leader, and it eloquently confirms the five years and millions of hours of work that people of every kind put into this fight.’’
Environmentalists had sought to block construction of the pipeline because it would have provided a conduit for petroleum extracted from the Canadian oil sands. The process of extracting that oil produces about 17 percent more planetwarming greenhouse gases than the process of extracting conventional oil.
But numerous State Department reviews concluded that construction of the pipeline would have little impact on whether that type of oil was burned, because it was already being extracted and moving to market via rail and existing pipelines.
“From a market perspective, the industry can find a different way to move that oil,” said Christine Tezak, an energy market analyst at ClearView Energy Partners, a Washington firm. “How long it takes is just a result of oil prices. If prices go up, companies will get the oil out.”
However, a State Department review also found that demand for the oil sands fuel would drop if oil prices fell below $65 a barrel, since moving oil by rail is more expensive than using a pipeline. An Environmental Protection Agency review of the project this year noted that under such circumstances, construction of the pipeline could be seen as contributing to emissions, since companies might be less likely to move the oil via rail when oil prices are low — but would be more likely to move it via the pipeline.
The recent election of a new Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, may also have influenced Obama’s decision. Trudeau’s predecessor, Stephen Harper, had pushed the issue as a top priority in the relationship between the United States and Canada. Although Trudeau also supports construction of the Keystone pipeline, he has not made the issue central to Canada’s relationship with the United States.