Wednesday afternoon, the Senate came only five votes short of overriding President Obama’s veto of S. 1, the “Keystone Pipeline Approval Act.” While unsurprising, this is a major disappointment for people who want to see more jobs and increased access to reliable, affordable energy from our close allies to the North.
The new Congress made the Keystone measure a top priority and NTU advocated for passage in both the House and Senate. Year in and year out, NTU has maintained support for the issue as the Keystone pipeline proposal overcame one environmental or permitting issue after another, yet never achieved the approval needed from the Obama Administration.
To understand the ups and downs of the Keystone saga, here’s we wrote barely over a year ago:
Today, the pipeline cleared a major hurdle. The Associated Press reports:
The long-delayed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada moved a significant step toward completion Friday as the State Department raised no major environmental objections to its construction.
Of course, this isn’t the first time the pipeline has passed environmental muster. During President Obama’s first term, the State Department conducted a study and found that the pipeline would not have any substantial environmental impact. However, the pipeline’s permit was still rejected by the President, and TransCanada, the company behind the project, was forced to reapply.
TransCanada did so, but the President postponed a decision until after the 2012 election. Meanwhile, other reports have found that the tar sands derived oil that will be transported by the pipeline is no more risky to transport than other kinds of crude oil and TransCanda has agreed to comply with ever more stringent construction conditions.
That the White House and some members of the Senate would yet again block construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline is especially troubling when only a little over two weeks ago West Virginia became the latest state to have an oil train derailment. Luckily, no one was killed or seriously hurt in the accident, but the derailment and subsequent fall of one tanker car into the river did cause severe damage and even started a house fire. Derailments and other accidents involving trains carrying enormous loads of oil are becoming more common as a result of the ongoing North American oil boom because there are few efficient alternatives to transport the crude.
The January 2014 environmental impact statement goes into great detail examining the building of the proposed pipeline and concludes that in the event the construction does not move forward, the Canadian tar sands will continue to be developed and shipped by rail. The report goes on to lay out the many serious downsides of not building the pipeline: rail has more reported releases of crude per ton per mile than pipelines, greenhouse gas emissions could be 28-42 percent greater than if the crude were transported by pipeline, and finally, because railroads often crisscross more populated areas and their inevitable terminus are at refineries often built close to major cities and ports – “There is also a greater potential for injuries and fatalities associated with rail transport relative to pipelines.”
Critics would be right in pointing out that spills from trains, though more frequent, tend to be less large than spills from pipelines, but considered more broadly, the report clearly indicates that rail transport is riskier and potentially more harmful than pipelines. And it’s important to put reports of pipeline spills in perspective – even with more than 190,000 miles of pipeline transporting liquid petroleum across the U.S., in the ten year period from 2002 – 2012, there were only four major incidents and new technologies are making pipelines an increasingly safer choice.
As the oil boom continues both at home and in Canada, decision-makers should let facts be their guide and dismiss political dogma. Continuing to stand in the way of progress doesn’t just deny Americans thousands of much-needed jobs and billions of dollars in economic activity, it also unnecessarily puts more people in harm’s way.