The Keystone Pipeline: Obama does the right thing

February 24, 2015 • 8:27 pm

We have readers here who make the exaggerated and ludicrous claim that President Obama is just as bad as any Republican we could have elected in his place. Such mushbrained notions are absolutely refuted by what happened today. Riddle me this: would any Republican president in the last 30 years have done this?

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A yes to the environment and lower carbon emissions, and a big raspberry at John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, who really wanted this pipeline, but don’t have enough Rethuglican votes to overturn this veto.

Expect more of this from a President who doesn’t need to be re-elected.

82 thoughts on “The Keystone Pipeline: Obama does the right thing”

  2. Can I use this comment as an internet confessional? I’ll assume yes. I don’t understand how we continually rely on fossil fuels but refuse to accept the externalities associated therewith. In an ideal world, I would definitely oppose Keystone. But in the world as we take it, this rigid opposition strikes me as odd. Am I wrong (probably)?

    1. I am not sure what position you are taking, except that b/c we live in the real world of dependency on fossil fuels, then we should go ahead and build the pipeline?
      The pipeline would:
      Take years to build.
      Not earn that many jobs while being built. The republicans say ‘thousands of jobs’ — those are while it is being built and that is not really very many jobs.
      Earn even fewer jobs while in operation.
      Be a risk for environmental disaster.
      Add to our dependency on fossil fuels, global warming, etc.

      1. Not to mention that the GOP has exempted it from the Oil Cleanup Tax, so any spill (of the nastiest form of crude oil in existence) is our burden, not the owning company.

        I lived in SE Texas when BASF Fina was going to expand their refinery in SE Texas to become the largest in the US. They were going to hire thousands of people.

        Actually, it turned out that they flew in 1,000s of employees from other countries to build the facility. They lived in tent cities in a field rented from a local farmer. Those people were fed in company kitchens and didn’t spend a single dime in the community.

        The 50 permanent employees were all transferred from out of state and most moved into Houston and drove an hour to work each day. Leaving SE Texas with nothing but the foggiest stretch of road in the world.

        1. (of the nastiest form of crude oil in existence)

          What? It runs better than 15% volume/volume hydrogen sulphide? That is some nasty stuff!
          OK – nights spent sitting on a breathing apparatus box on top of a sand dune, watching the clouds of gas drift down hill from the shakers, and using my counterfeit note detector to watch out for scorpions who considered me “lunch”, may possibly have coloured my opinion about what is the nastiest crude in the world. But somehow, I doubt that the part refined product of a Canadian mining operation is going to be up there with the nastiest around.
          (for reference : hydrogen sulphide is substantially denser than air, which is why I was sitting on the top of the sand dune ; and inhaling much more than 0.01% hydrogen sulphide in air has a high probability of killing you (or rendering you unconscious – same thing most of the time because of the density question) ; if it doesn’t kill you, “neurological sequels” are a racing certainty.)
          There are perfectly good arguments against extracting Canadian tar sands, and building this pipeline. But hyperbole doesn’t strengthen your case.

      2. The pipeline is pretty much already built. It wouldn’t take longer than a year or two for finish the section that is being held up. The purpose of pipelines is to move oil and natural gas, not create jobs. Oil by pipeline makes a lot more sense than oil by rail which is the alternative. A more effective way to protect the environment would be to raise taxes on gasoline, jet fuel, natural gas, and electricity.

          1. Well, all right, but this

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-Mégantic_rail_disaster

            is what happens when an oil train explodes in the centre of a town. (It happened an hour’s drive from here).

            I dislike oil whether it be transported by ship, train or pipeline, but at least a pipeline is a static thing. It’s easier to monitor.

            Regarding the Keystone pipeline, my gut reaction is “the fewer pipelines, the better”. But I also know that’s it’s not going to curb our reliance on oil nor our production of greenhouse gases. Apart from giving the oil industry and its Republican lackeys the finger (which is also a good thing, as far as I’m concerned), I’m not sure what the point of this decision is.

          2. There have also been a number of other massive explosions, luckily they were away from populated areas.

          3. A lot of the oil coming to the North East is from the Bakken formation in North Dakota. I saw a presentation on it last year.
            A big problem is the oil from the region is saturated with natural gas which makes it extremely explosive. Estimates are that a handful of tank cars exploding could damage or destroy structures within 5 miles. The trains are coming along tracks on the west bank of the Hudson River. It passes many towns, including my own – Poughkeepsie, NY. A secondary problem is that the tank cars used are old and not reinforced properly to help mitigate the dangers. Congress, naturally, has not been interested in pushing through new legislation to up the tanker standards. But, fuel oil this year is pretty cheap, and I’m sure that’s popular.

          4. I’d heard of that calamity but not read anything so detailed before. The way the story was written drew me in completely. The descriptions of the unattended train with a defective locomotive left running, lightless, as the air brakes slowly lost power–more effective than any thriller I’ve read in a long while!

            I would agree with you that there’s no good way to transport oil, especially when all the entities involved are profit-seeking private companies interested in spending as little as they can get away with.

      3. I am not sure what position you are taking, except that b/c we live in the real world of dependency on fossil fuels, then we should go ahead and build the pipeline?

        That’s an uncharitable way of interpreting Aelfric’s point. Worrying over the veto of a particular pipeline proposed for fossil fuel transport is small potatoes, especially compared with the existence of mass fossil fuel use to begin with.

        Moreover, I’m not yet convinced he’s doing it for the altruistic reasons presented, either, starting with Adam M.’s observation at Comment #5 below. There’s also the plausibility that he’s more concerned about business and corporate interests than health and safety.

        I’ll say he’s not as bad as the Republican alternatives, but then neither’s a lettuce sandwich.

      4. More and more oil is being transported by rail. There was a derailment near Timmins ON last week which resulted in a fire. Fortunately it was in the bush so there were no fatalities or injuries. A year or so back (using memory here) a train of oil cars ran away and exploded in the middle of a small town in Quebec. The downtown was flattened and there were many deaths and injuries.

        I would posit that oil is transported more safely by pipeline than by rail. If we are wedded to it, which at this time we are, surely we should use the safest method of transportation.

    2. The tar sands are some of the dirtiest forms of carbon around, and their extraction involves widespread devastation. Coal mining via mountaintop removal and offshore oil drilling are environmentally friendly in comparison.

      2. I’m against this pipeline for all the reasons everyone has stated – especially because I have this expectation, as Jim indicates above, that removing this oil is an environmental disaster, which it is (see Hanson), but to poke the GOP in the eye while doing is a cherry on top. But I’ve started to listen to people – some here – who point out that rail and truck transport are more susceptible to spills, disasters, what have you. And I’m starting to think this – am I crazy? That tar sand oil is coming up and out one way or another, pipeline or rail. No? Stopping this pipeline won’t stop the environmental devastation which is sure to result from removing and burning this tar sand oil. So we’re fucked either way, maybe the pipeline is actually the better deal, mitigation wise. Or was my initial supposition correct – the supposition everyone against the pipeline seems to believe – that stopping the XL is stopping the tar sands oil.

    3. The pipeline may yet be approved; the veto stands primarily as a thumb in the eye of the GOP, and secondarily as the exertion of executive privilege and agency process.

      The externalities of the pipeline appear to a drop in the bucket, relative to the overall impact of fossil fuels and the extraction industry generally, but that’s because the potential contribution to the US fuel supply is insignificant.

      Still, just as with so-called fracking, if the environmental impacts are disproportionate to the benefits of the project, as they seem to be, I will be disappointed when or if XL gets the green light. The longer it takes to approve, the greater the chance for less-damaging fuel sources to continue being developed – I would wager the thing will be obsolete before it can deliver anything approaching the promised benefits, such as they are.

    1. As a Canadian, I would like add my heart-felt thanks to President Obama for his action today.

  4. I was glad to hear America did the right thing and stopped Canada from being the asshole for once. Thanks America! 🙂

    However, when I heard the news while driving home, the announcer explained that it didn’t really kill the whole thing but just forced it to go back through approvals.

  5. We will see. Obama has so far only stood opposed to attempts to approve the pipeline without following the usual approval process. (See how the letter says “this bill… attempts to circumvent longstanding and proven processes…”)

    It’s not clear that he opposes the pipeline in general, and the approval processes that the pipeline did go through, overseen by his administration, were widely considered to have been shams. I still expect the administration to approve the pipeline if TransCanada does the paperwork.

    2. You are correct that Obama has not clearly stated “no.”

      I could see circumstances, in a political situation such as existed in this country decades ago, in which Republicans could take clear steps to get such a project approved. It would be very simple: wrap it up together with things the president wants. Like infrastructure. The president wants funding for repairing highways, replacing bridges, mass transit including high speed rail, maybe even some high speed internet. I speculate that Obama would eagerly sign such a bill.

      Whether today’s Republicans, in today’s political climate, would even think to put together such a bill seems doubtful. They would rather whine about how the hyper-liberal, Kenyan-born, probably-not-Christian black man who doesn’t love ‘Murica is impeding jobs and progress. They need for their base to see that they oppose Obama, not that they are willing to do what it takes to govern.

  6. I am glad to see this. The Keystone Pipeline would go right over the Ogalala Aquifer- not to mention other sensitive habitats. And the track record of spills is horrendous. My brother told me, oh but there is so much (pipeline) already there- as if that makes it better! Yes, I use oil. And I will pay more for it. I hope, maybe it is simplistic, but I hope that the tighter the oil flow gets, the more innovation will be put to making renewable resources viable, efficient, and economical.

    1. Good points! With the recent plunge in U.S. gasoline prices, the expected has occurred: a spike in sales of heavy SUVs and trucks. All of a sudden, high- or even medium-mileage isn’t important. So those of us who drive compacts will have even more trouble seeing the road–not to mention the aggressive driving of alpha males and whatever we call their mates.

      Some prognosticators of he effects of global warming have warned that the personal automobile must be given up if we are to have a chance of surviving. Who’s going first?

      3. Getting the majority of Americans to give up their cars…? Invent jetpacks and then you might have a chance.

    2. IMO, the plunge in oil prices was primarily driven by the recent OPEC meetings. All they could decide was: Pump more oil! to keep their economies going. OPEC has now proved itself to be powerless (at least for a while). They need the consumer more than the other way around (for now).

      Oil is going to be the big gorilla for a long time yet.

      The choice becomes: Transport by pipeline or by rail/truck (for these oils fields in question).

      Pipeline is more energy efficient and (I’m pretty sure – haven’t checked the stats carefully) safer (far fewer moving parts).

      We’ve had a LOT of bad rail and truck oil accidents in the last 1+ years in the US (and Canada).

      As I noted below, the down-sides to pipelines are their permanence and when there is a spill, it tends to be worse (because there is no container size limitation).

      But my main beef with this pipeline is that it is intended to support export of oil out of North America, which helps only oil company profits, not the societies of N. America.

      As I noted below: I have mixed feelings but I’m glad he vetoed.

      1. OPEC has not increased production. The only countries in the world that have made notable increases in oil production in the last few years are the USA and Canada.

        1. Yes, but they (OPEC) are just keeping on pumping despite the drop. They used to always restrict production to hold the price up. They can’t do that now, with the entry of Russia (in a big way) onto the world market and of course the US and Canada, especially the US — it’s happening right in my neck of the woods.

  7. So far the Obama administration’s “thorough consideration” has taken longer than World War II took. My bet is that it will take two more years.

  9. To be fair, it’s still the lesser lizard fallacy.

    I won’t recount all Obama’s sins here, but they’re legion and include all the heinous crimes of the previous administration with extra sugar on top.

    Postponing the Keystone pipeline until his bureaucracy can approve it on their own schedule doesn’t quite make up for committing us to another decade of war in Afghanistan on top of the decade and an half we’v already been there, just for starters….

    b&

  10. Wonderful news. I had anticipated the veto for a long time. I think the pres is mainly interested in keeping dirty tar sands oil off the market and out of the atmosphere. The procedural talk is just the legal means.
    I can’t think of any republican who would have done this. Shame on them.

  11. In 2000 people said the two parties were equally bad and both presidential candidates sucked and it didn’t really make a difference who won. Most of them stopped saying that on September 12, 2001

    1. The way I remember it, on Sept. 12, 2001, the country was united as it had never been before in my lifetime.

      It took a while for Dubya to ramp up to wars.

      But you’re right on the money regarding the damage the “they’re both the same so why vote” crowd did.

  12. My concern is that if the review process doesn’t clearly identify problems with the pipeline that the average voter will accept, and if this drags on to 2016, the Republicans may use it as an opportunity to paint themselves as the party of economic opportunity (even though the opportunity is minimal and the risk significant) which might swing some voters their way.

    Perhaps it’s different in the US, but in Canada the results of these assessments never get widely published and they tend not to contain language that a typical person finds clear enough to form an opinion.

    We’ve had projects here with people for and against and the Environmental Impact studies have been so vague that they’ve been used by both sides to claim their side is right. I hope the US doesn’t use the same processes.

    1. “in Canada the results of these assessments never get widely published and they tend not to contain language that a typical person finds clear enough to form an opinion”

      This is true of EISs in the US as well. They are published to the Federal Register (I think) but who reads that (in the US, general public)? And they are generally pretty thick and jargon-filled.

  14. I don’t get the love for Obama from the left. The far left, sure, with his administration being a sucker for the statistical lies of the Radical Social Sciences hucksters. As far as Wall Street is concerned he’s not done a thing to reign them in or bring the criminals to account. As much of corporate welfare fan as Bush, if not more so in practice.

    Tinkering around the edges with a few sops to the left is about all you can expect from him. The best I can say about him is that he played the part better than Gee Dub Buffoon.

  15. “We have readers here who make the exaggerated and ludicrous claim that President Obama is just as bad as any Republican we could have elected in his place.”

    Obama is not as bad as the worst Republicans but not as good as the best.

    1. Given the current list of Republican presidential candidates, which of those would you prefer to Barack Obama?

      Sitting over the other side of the Atlantic, the thought of Rand Paul, Ted Cruz or even Jeb Bush as President scares the heck out of me.

        1. Are you serious?

          Never mind Bridgegate. Christie just gave a nine Billion dollar windfall to Exxon-Mobil in a sweetheart deal that lets them off the hook for cleaning up an environmental catastrophe at a New Jersey oil refinery.

          Christie may or may not have been in Big Oil’s pocket before…but now he’s so deep in their pocket that even our resident gravel inspector doesn’t have enough equipment to extract him. Probably not even locate him, for that matter….

          b&

          4. Bridgegate? I thought underlings did that and that Christie was in the clear.

            I didn’t know about the Exxon settlement. Why do you think he did that, since the case has been running 10 years? Perhaps he thought the state would lose.

            Still, he doesn’t seem like the average Republican wingnut to me.

          5. Bridgegate? I thought underlings did that and that Christie was in the clear.

            The investigations aren’t over yet, and nobody believes that as obsessive a micromanager as Christie would let his underlings run rampant like that unless he explicitly told them that he wanted them to do it in a way that gave him plausible deniability.

            Why do you think he did that, since the case has been running 10 years? Perhaps he thought the state would lose.

            I think it has an awful lot more to do with Jeb Bush raising ludicrous amounts of money and Christie seeing a multi-billion-dollar bribe to the oil industry as his only hope of a prayer of remaining financially competitive.

            Remember, the state had already won and was just waiting on the judge to decide how many billions the fine should be. And there’s no way that the judge would have gone with anything anywhere nearly as piddling as what Christie “settled” for.

            b&

    2. Name him or her. Who is this mythical “best” Republican who would be a better President, policy wise, than President Obama? Who?

        1. Could you have elected Nixon “in his place”? Seems like it would’ve been a long shot. He appears to be one of the more immobile and intransigent Republicans at the moment.

          All I’ve ever heard about Nixon in Britain has been negative, although I vaguely remember Michael Moore bigging him up in one of his dubious books. Political nuance seems to disappear the further away the country in question is. Maybe that’s why we have a hard trouble understanding why Obama isn’t being carried through the streets on people’s shoulders simply for being a black president who talks the liberal talk.

          1. Though obviously often reluctant, Nixon dramatically drew down American troop levels in Vietnam to the point that the war could end on his own schedule shortly after his impeachment; he opened relations with Red China; and he put the capstones on the major Civil Rights legislative projects (such as Title IX).

            Compared to Obama, Nixon was a shining beacon of progressive liberalism.

            b&

          2. I think Nixon, like all the others, was a product of his times. If he were alive today, he’d probably fit in comfortably with McConnell and Boehner. The country is much more conservative now than when Nixon walked the Earth.
            If on the other hand he was the old Nixon living today, he probably would not be heard much of. Where is the middle wing of the republican party?

          3. I think the larger point here isn’t about individual presidents per se, but rather about the extent to which the entire narrative and thus the entire political spectrum has moved to the right. Both the democratic and Republican parties have drifted rightward since the mid-seventies.

          4. And the degree of the “drift” can’t be overstated.

            We’re now in the position where the most notoriously radically conservative president of the modern era would be too liberal for the liberal wing of the liberal party.

            Is it any surprise that those of us who would have been liberals back in Nixon’s day have a difficult time distinguishing between Tweedledee and Tweedledum?

            Ah, hell…just one more example. Obamacare started as the Heritage Fund’s wet dream of the ideal ultra-conservative healthcare “solution” — what the neocons thought healthcare really should look like, but was far too radical a departure from where the center of the country was to be taken seriously. So why should it be surprising that those of us who’re still just as liberal as we were in the ’90s think that Obamacare is a radical conservative trainwreck?

            b&

          5. I agree mostly with what you said and I shared your apprehension to the ACA as well, initially. While I still think an NHS style single payer system would have been ideal, I can’t describe the results of the ACA as a “trainwreck.”

          6. My parents are struggling mightily with the ACA-related blowback into Medicare. They’re having a devil of a time just getting coverage that includes the primary care physician they’ve been going to for decades; the opthamologist who’s been treating Mom’s glaucoma; and the surgeon who just operated on her back. And this, of course, involves changes happening to their coverage as opposed to anything they themselves have done.

            Even Baihu has better insurance than they do. He develops any condition (or injury or whatever), and I take him to any licensed veterinarian, pay the first $100, and then some small percentage of everything else that’s related to that condition for the rest of his life. No nonsense about networks, preauthorization, bureaucrats overriding the medical decisions of the doctors (which happened multiple times after Mom’s surgery), or the rest.

            So, yeah…when a cat can get better insurance than a couple on Medicare because of the ACA…that’s most emphatically a trainwreck.

            Cheers,

            b&

          7. Nixon also created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). No republican today would dream of doing that.

          8. Excellent point, especially in light of the topic at hand.

            Obama’s environmental legacy looks set to be a minor delay in the completion of the Keystone pipeline at a time when domestic carbon extraction is soaring to all-time highs.

            Nixon’s — Nixon’s! — environmental legacy was the EPA.

            …and Obama is the great liberal savior…again…how, exactly?

            b&

  16. I was holding my breath as to whether Obama would follow through and veto the pipeline. Grand gesture and the right one for our environment. Period. The right is up in arms of course. SO many jobs lost, so great for the country and the economy, ALL the American people are in favor of it, Obama is bowing to the big money environmentalists who support the Democratic party… I’m proud of him for standing up to congress. Made my day!

  17. I don’t know enough about the pipeline to care strongly, but my sense is that it is neither as good or as bad as it is made out to be. I just wish they had tied it to decent high speed rail. You csn build your silly pipeline if you also approve nationwide high speed rail.

    2. High speed rail sounds nice, but where would it go and who would use it? I don’t see it as being economically viable. I can fly from Chicago to Las Vegas in 3 hours for $150. Using an unrealistic average speed of 200mph a non stop rail trip would take 9 hours and I couldn’t guess the cost.

      1. 1) We’re already pretty far out on a tangent. The point is that the Republicans, if their primary goal were really to get this pipeline approved, could compromise and make a deal that the president would probably agree to.

        2) It’s all about you. What is magical about your choice of Chicago and Vegas as endpoints? If you wanted to go to Madison, WI to visit FFRF headquarters, rail might be faster than air.

        3) Current air travel takes much much longer than the time actually spent in the air. You have to show up at the airport at least an hour early to go through the security theater.

        4) Air travel is currently affordable because petroleum prices are low. This will not always be the case. When planning something like national transportation, it helps to be able to see more than 6 months into the future.

        And so on.

        1. I only used Chicago to Vegas because I made that trip 14 times for work in 2014 so I’m familiar with it. I also travel to Auburn Hill MI frequently and drive instead of flying because of the airport hassle. High speed rail might be better than driving, but how many people would need to use it to make it viable? Chicago to Madison is maybe 2 1/2 hours by car, so I if I wanted to see how my FFRF donation was being spent it’d just be a day trip. High speed rail would require a new route and buying up a lot of property or rebuilding the current route via Milwaukee. My only point is that I don’t see how you can offset the cost of the infrastructure for high speed rail.
          The TSA also screens at Amtrack stations.
          As to your first point, yes.
          FYI, I love trains. Been a model railroader for 45 years.
          Appologies for the tangent.

  18. Expect more of this from a President who doesn’t need to be re-elected.

    I think his re-election would have been much easier if he had done a lot more of this in his first term.

    And if his fellow Democrats had solidly stood behind him, they too would have found re-election easier.

    Right now, though, too many people (including almost all of the Democrats in Washington, D.C.)really have no idea what Democrats stand for.

  19. I have mixed feelings about this. I am happy he has refused this bill.

    That said, pipelines probably are (I have not dug into the statistics to say this for certain) the safest way to transport things like petroleum. The alternative is trucks, rail cars, or barges (not really an option for Alberta or the Bakken Field) from which we’ve seen quite a few bad accidents with oil transport recently.

    The down-sides to a pipeline are:

    1. It becomes a permanent part of the landscape and infrastructure. (And imposes itself on land owners.)

    2. When you get a spill, they tend to be worse because they are not naturally limited by container size.

    I can tell you, people in Minnesota are not that happy about all the oil trains rolling through.

    The main reasons I don’t like the current proposed pipeline are:

    A. It needs to go through the full “vetting” process as Pres. Obama noted.

    B. It is intended to move tar sands oil, which (from what I’ve read, I’m no expert) has a bigger carbon footprint than other sources.

    C. But the real reason is: This transported oil is not intended to provide energy independence for North America, it’s intended for export. It’s simply a money-maker for the oil companies and nothing more. They are driven to maximize the dollar at whatever cost (they can get away with) to other societal values. That’s not good in this case.

  20. Good for Obama.
    From the perspective of the international oil companies, every gallon of oil that’s
    in the ground is unrealized profit and must
    be extracted.
    What I would like to know (and have never heard) is how much money are the corporations
    involved in this pipeline stuffing into the pockets of their GOP servants in DC ?

  22. It is more symbolism than anything, though I’m always pleased to see the Repug’s petulant anger.

    Even if Obama signed the bill, the pipeline still would be on hold as there is a large eminent domain case in the courts of Nebraska. If the plaintiffs win, the pipeline won’t be built no matter what any politician in Washington does. Supposedly, the case is still 2 years from being settled, so again, nothing will be decided until then.

  23. Politics aside, isn’t it time we got the White House a WANG word processing system or something? I mean, really, important stuff like this on a Courier 12 pt typewriter. At least it is an electric typewriter. Maybe we could get an IBM Selectric with a selection of type-balls for them to try out and see if they’re up for the WANG system.

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