State Dept. says no environmental bar to Keystone XL

State Dept. says no environmental bar to Keystone XL

click link

snip


To the chagrin of environmentalists opposed to the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, a State Department report released Friday afternoon stated there is no conclusive environmental reason it should not be built.
The report makes no recommendations for the president’s anticipated decision on whether or not to approve the project, which will carry crude oil from Alberta’s tar sands to the Gulf Coast, while — according to opponents — producing high levels of carbon emissions, disturbing communities and adding to the coffers of oil magnates such as the Koch brothers. Friday’s lengthy report suggests environmental objections have been overestimated by the project’s critics. Via the New York Times:

The draft report, which updates a 2011 study that essentially gave the project a green light, carefully weighs the impacts of the pipeline, which would carry about 800,000 barrels a day of heavy crude oil from tar sands formations in Alberta across the Great Plains to Gulf Coast refineries.
President Obama rejected the original route proposed by the pipeline operator, TransCanada, because of potential adverse impacts on sensitive grasslands and aquifers in Nebraska. The new environmental statement looks at a revised route submitted by TransCanada last spring.
The new impact statement says that extracting, shipping, refining and burning oil from the tar sands produces more climate-altering greenhouse gases than most conventional oil, but less than many of the project’s critics claim. The State Department study says that tar sands oil produces 5 percent to 19 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than other crude, depending on what oil was compared and who performed the calculations.

Perhaps most interestingly, the report suggests that with or without the Keystone XL, the oil industry will likely continue to develop the oil sands and that the demand for heavy crude in the United States will not diminish either way. It’s a dark message to environmentalists, suggesting that the tar sands battle is lost.