Keystone XL Pipeline Politics

Trans Canada is expected to file a new application for the rerouted cross-border segment of the controversial Keystone XL tar sands bitumen pipeline today, May 4. The filing will reignite the election year political rhetoric surrounding environmental permitting and construction of the huge project. The southern leg of the new pipeline, from Cushing, Oklahoma to Port Arthur, Texas, is already in the 45 day Corps of Engineers permit process. If the Corps does not deny the permit within the 45 day period, it will be automatically granted. The northern segment, from Hardisty, Alberta to Cushing, requires a permit from the State Department because it crosses the international border between the U.S. and Canada.

Trans Canada’s proposed new route across Nebraska dodges what that state has defined as the environmentally sensitive Sandhills region, but environmentalists say that Nebraska bureaucrats have defined the Sandhills too narrowly, and also complain that the new route will still carry the thick crude over parts of the Ogallala aquifer, which provides drinking and irrigation water to an eight state region, including parts of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming.

Over a quarter of all irrigated farmland in the United States is served by the Ogallala. Eighty two percent of the folks living above the Ogallala get their drinking water from it. Those key facts, plus the general environmental opposition to Canadian tar sands mining as a contributor to global warming, form the basis of opposition to the pipeline. However, election year campaign rhetoric is more likely than scientific fact to determine the outcome of the permitting process.

House Speaker John Boehner has issued yet another statement on Keystone XL, proclaiming that, “With Nebraska now on board and the application being re-filed, the president has lost his always flimsy excuse for blocking this job creating project. With energy security at stake and jobs on the line, he should listen to the American people, not just his political base, and approve it immediately.” Environmental opponents to the project are equally adamant. Bold Nebraska Executive Director Jane Kleeb responds, “The fundamental facts remain; Americans are being asked to put clean water at risk for an extreme form of energy that will add nothing to our energy security.”

At least the environmentalists don’t deny that building the project would create jobs.

Trans Canada Proposes Keystone XL Pipeline Reroute Bypassing Nebraska’s Sandhills

On April 18, the owner of the proposed 1,700 mile, $7 billion Keystone XL crude oil pipeline between Alberta and Texas proposed a series of new routings across Nebraska, all of which would bypass the environmentally sensitive Sandhills region which overlies the Ogallalla aquifer supplying drinking and irrigation water to eight states. Earlier last week, Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman signed a bill allowing that state’s relevant agencies to review the proposed pipeline’s routing, regardless of federal action or inaction on permits for the project.

President Obama has already directed the responsible federal agencies to fast track the 485 mile southern segment of the new pipeline, from Cushing, Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast. Approval of the routing and permits for construction of the northern segment has been delayed because of concern over the possibility of massive groundwater pollution in the eight midwestern states supplied by the Ogallalla aquifer should the pipeline be buried in the Sandhills, and spring a leak there. The proposed new Nebraska routes are designed to overcome this particular objection to construction of the entire project.

Potential Pipeline Veto Threatens Highway Trust Fund

While Nebraska officials search for an alternate route for the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, which could avoid burying the tube for transportation of Canadian tar sands oil in the grasslands and hilly marshes overlying the all important Ogallala aquifer which supplies fresh drinking and irrigation water to much of the south central United States, Washington D. C. politicians are once again threatening gridlock to most federal infrastructure funding by threats and counterthreats respecting temporary extension legislation for the federal Highway Trust Fund.  The current Highway Trust Fund band aid extension will expire June 30, and House Republicans are seeking to attach a requirement mandating construction of Keystone XL to another temporary extension bill which would keep highway, rail, transit and waterway funds flowing from Washington through September 30. President Obama yesterday threatened to veto any highway bill including a Keystone XL Construction mandate.

The $7 billion Trans Canada project received authorization from the Nebraska legislature for the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality to evaluate new routing options, rather than the state’s elected Public Service Commission. Governor Heineman is expected to sign the bill. The bill authorizes what opponents characterize as a “rubber stamp” approval of any alternate route proposed by Trans Canada, and gives Trans Canada eminent domain powers to acquire rights of way once the new route is established.

Of course, since the pipeline will cross the U.S./Canada border, Trans Canada will also need federal approval for the project, and President Obama recently rejected the company’s application for the required federal permit. The Highway Trust Fund extension amendment threatened by House Republicans is intended to overturn that Executive Branch decision. Once again, election campaign talking points have trumped intelligent policy analysis, and the bankruptcy of leadership in both political parties is exposed for all citizens to see.