Obama makes the wrong call on Keystone XL pipeline
Like it or not, the USA still imports a quarter of its oil
By the time President Obama finally rejected the proposed Keystone XL pipeline Friday after an absurdly prolonged seven-year review, the project to bring oil from Canadian tar sands to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries had become a wildly exaggerated symbol for both sides in an increasingly nasty fight.
As Obama himself noted, Keystone “would neither be a silver bullet for the economy … nor the express lane to climate disaster proclaimed by others.”
In fact, Keystone was mostly just another energy pipeline in a nation that’s already crisscrossed by more than 150,000 miles of them, one that took on disproportionate importance as the debate dragged on.
On balance, the 1,179-mile Keystone line warranted approval. It would have given the U.S. a substantial new supply of oil from a trusted neighbor. Like it or not, the USA still imports about a quarter of its oil, much of it from volatile nations that are hardly close allies like Canada.
Environmentalists’ concern for the planet is valid, but so is concern for how to fuel the quarter billion vehicles already on U.S. roads and highways. Sources such as solar and wind are probably decades away from displacing petroleum. Most of the 800,000 barrels a day that would have traveled through Keystone XL would have stayed in the U.S., a valuable hedge against future supply constraints.
The State Department had determined that Keystone wouldn’t significantly affect carbon emission levels. Most or all of that Ca- nadian oil will likely be produced anyway, perhaps to go to consumers in China or elsewhere via alternative pipelines, and some to the U.S. via rail tanker cars, a far more dangerous method of transport than pipelines, as various train disasters have shown.
Environmentalists’ campaign to keep tar sands oil in the ground is unlikely to succeed. Current low world oil prices are making it less inviting to move the oil now, but if history is any guide, oil prices will rebound as they always have.
Supporters’ argument that the pipeline, estimated to cost at least $8 billion, would have been an economically vital source of jobs was overblown. Studies showed it would have produced roughly 42,000 jobs during the two years or so it took to build — nothing to sneeze at, but a tiny fraction of the nation’s 143 million jobs. Once construction was over, estimates were that permanent employment would drop to about 35 jobs.
Obama said approving Keystone would have undercut U.S. leadership ahead of this month’s climate change talks in Paris. Actually, putting a price on carbon pollution, a step thwarted by the Republican-controlled Congress, would be a far better way to demonstrate American leadership than the symbolic move of killing a pipeline project.