WASHINGTON – The Keystone XL pipeline will open the floodgates for a huge expansion of the oilsands that will increase carbon pollution by up to 1.2 billion tonnes over its 50-year life, according to a report by the Natural Resources Defence Council.
As a “major driver of tar sands expansion” and therefore a significant contributor to climate change, Keystone XL should be denied a permit because it fails to meet U.S. President Barack Obama’s stipulation that the pipeline “does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution,” the group claims.
[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]The NRDC states that the Keystone XL will enable an oilsands expansion that alone will create enough additional carbon to negate reductions expected from new U.S. vehicle emission standards.
“Our analysis clearly demonstrates that the Keystone XL pipeline would dramatically boost the development of dirty tar sands oil, significantly exacerbating the problem of climate pollution,” Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, director of NRDC’s international program, said at a news conference. “Keystone XL fails the president’s climate test and he should reject it to protect our national interest.”
The NRDC analysis comes at a time when all sides of the debate attempt to heap political pressure on Obama, who is expected to make the final decision on the Keystone XL in the fall.
Keystone XL is without doubt the most debated pipeline in the history of the industrial age and may, regardless of the outcome, mark a turning point in the U.S. towards a new era of fuel efficiency and clean energy. Obama signaled as much to the nation when he said in a climate-change speech on June 25 that the “net effects of the pipeline’s impact on our climate will be absolutely critical to determining whether this project is allowed to go forward.”
Environmental groups claim that that means the pipeline project should be killed. Oilsands extraction and processing produces about three times more carbon pollution than conventional crude. Oilsands companies plan to triple production and have admitted that the expansion will at least double carbon emissions. The industry needs more pipeline capacity to ship their increase production.
Bill McKibben, who founded the climate change activist group 350.org and who participated in the press conference by telephone, called Keystone XL “the key fuse to the largest carbon bomb on the continent.”
He said Keystone XL would give the oilsands “a new lease on life spurring it forward and pouring immense amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.”
“This is a perfect place to draw a line in the tar sands as it were,” he said. “There is no way that in good conscience or in good science the president … could ever approve the Keystone pipeline.”
TransCanada spokesperson Shawn Howard claimed in an email that the NRDC report is based on a “false” premise that bitumen from Keystone XL will replace conventional oil in the U.S. “Essentially they will replace one source of heavy oil for another, meaning that there will be virtually no impact on the emissions produced from the production of this oil,” he said. He noted the pipeline would also carry crude oil from North Dakota.
“The reality is that we can move towards a less carbon-intensive economy, which TransCanada supports, but it will take decades for that to become a reality,” he said. Environmentalists counter that the world cannot wait decades. They also note that oilsands bitumen is much more carbon intensive than the Venezuelan heavy oils it will replace.
The NRDC submitted its report this week to the U.S. State Department, which is preparing a final report on the impact of the 1900-km pipeline that will transport mainly oilsands bitumen from Alberta to Texas refineries on the gulf coast.
Industry, governments, members of the public and environmental activists have made more than one million submissions to the state department expressing their views on the contentious project. Obama is expected to make a final decision this fall.
A preliminary report issued by the state department earlier this year claimed that the $5.3-billion pipeline’s impact on carbon pollution will be negligible because oilsands companies can find other ways to get their product to market. These would include rail plus other proposed pipeline routes running east and west in Canada.
Environmentalists, however, dispute this finding arguing that the alternatives are too costly and there is no certainty that they would gain public support.
Keystone XL owner TransCanada together with the U.S. petroleum industry have produced a barrage of newspaper and TV advertising promoting job creation and energy security.
