Holding up the Keystone pipeline

It’s time for President Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, said the Vancouver Sun in an editorial. The proposed pipeline, which would carry a bitumen mix extracted from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries in and around Texas, has been studied for years, as politicians and scientists argued over whether it was environmentally sound. Last week the U.S. State Department released a report saying the project would have little impact on overall greenhouse gas emissions. That should end opposition by U.S. environmentalists. The fact is that the oil will be extracted no matter what. The project will merely enable Canada to deliver the crude by a north-south pipeline to Gulf Coast refineries, rather than by train or truck-—-or by ship to Asia. It will “allow the U.S. to get more of the 8 million barrels of oil it imports each day from a good neighbor,” rather than from Saudi Arabia or Venezuela.

But it’s not just U.S. environmentalists who oppose the pipeline, said Clare Demerse in the Ottawa Citizen. Many of us Canadians also want to halt the project, to “buy time for regulators and companies to make progress in managing the oil sands’ environmental impacts.” If we go ahead with Keystone, the increase in oil sands production—a dirty, carbon-intensive activity requiring heavy equipment—will mean the “equivalent to adding well over 4 million cars to the road.” More production is actually unlikely, at least in the short term, said Stephen Ewart in the Calgary Herald, given the huge backlog of extracted bitumen—the tarry substance from which oil is extracted. The “vast underground network of pipes that move approximately 3.2 million barrels of crude oil a day in Canada” is already inadequate.More pipeline capacity is needed “simply to support the projects that are already under way.” Without the Keystone pipeline, we’ll be stuck with a glut of extracted heavy bitumen and no way to get it to refineries. As a result, the price of bitumen has been dropping for months. “We’re in a jam,” said Brenda Kenny, president of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association. “The numbers are stark.” The losses could reach up to $70 million a day.

It’s no good appealing to the Americans’ reason, said Todd Babiak in the Toronto Globe and Mail. They don’t see the hypocrisy of opposing our oil sands while they depend so heavily on much dirtier coal. So we should appeal to emotion. The story of the oil sands is “a story of pioneers and risk-takers and scientists and crazies, who slowly and then very quickly transformed a mysterious tar into one of the largest fuel sources on the planet.” It’s an inspiring tale that feeds America’s can-do spirit and passion for innovation.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

There’s no denying that Canada has failed to present the tar sands in the best possible light, said Michael Den Tandt in the Vancouver Sun. The case for extracting the oil is strong. But our government has blown “the optics of it,” allowing Conservative backbenchers to rail against a proposed carbon tax and make the country look anti-environmentalist. Last year’s budget, which “gutted protections for lakes and rivers,” didn’t help. At this point, all the Canadian government can do is keep quiet “and hope U.S. economic self-interest prevails.”