The Keystone XL pipeline -- designed to bring filthy tar sands oil from Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas so that oil companies can profit by selling the oil to China -- was dealt a severe setback today when President Obama said no to an election year blackmail threat by the American Petroleum Institute and its lackeys in Congress.
For those new to the story, this is the pipeline that House Republicans insisted get a quick up or down from the White House as their price for providing modest relief to unemployed Americans just before Christmas. It is also the pipeline whose chief sponsor thought that the normal corrupt ways of Washington would guarantee approval until an unlikely combination of environmentalists, ranchers and native peoples drew a rare line in the sand and would not budge.
After two years of increasing activism by CREDO members -- with over a million petitions, letters and calls and literally hundreds of our members arrested, President Obama today rejected the current route of the Keystone XL. This is outstanding news and cause for celebration.
However, President Obama went out of his way to invite the oil industry to consider another route rather than simply rejecting the catastrophic pipeline as wrong on the merits. The oil industry is relentless in its pursuit of a way to profitably extract the tar sands and sell it on the world market, and this invitation is akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Today's procedural no is a victory purely for the activists who forced the President to take responsibility and reject naked political threats from the oil industry. But rejecting this route on a technicality means the fight continues.
We take seriously the conclusion of the Administration's own chief scientist that full burning of the tar sands is "game over" for global warming. Conceding the fight on global warming is not an option.
I have personally been arrested in order to stop this pipeline, along with thousands of others. We -- all of us -- will step up each time the industry tries again, meeting the industry and all their special interest representatives in Congress blow by blow.
CREDO waged one of the single largest activism campaigns of any organization in the anti-Keystone XL movement, delivering 1,188,106 petition signatures and public comments to the White House, the State Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, House and Senate leadership, the Nebraska legislature, and TransCanada. CREDO members also made 36,360 calls to the White House, Obama for America, and House and Senate offices, organized a protest with more than 1,000 people outside of an Obama fundraiser in San Francisco, recruited hundreds of activists to attend public hearings along the proposed pipeline route, and submitted 156,615 public comments to the State Department as part of the formal hearing process on the project.
Clearly the White House has decided that in an election year caving to oil industry pressure and approving a pipeline to help a foreign oil company export dirty tar sands oil to China is not a winning strategy. What better villains in an election year than the owners of a leaky pipeline, incredibly profitable oil companies, and the insatiable Chinese economy?
We won this round. The fight continues.
Corbin Hiar: Why the Keystone XL Rejection Won't Stop Tar Sands Development
Nigel Barber: Keystone Pipeline: Gift Horse or Threat to America
Oil is not just about fuel for cars. About half of a barrel of oil is used to make gasoline...the rest makes things like:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_products_made_from_oil
Pretty much any item containing plastics (from the bumpers on your 'electric' car to your TV, your hair dryer, the speakers in your stereo, the tools in scientific labs, or that cel phone you keep texting on while driving) is a petroleum based product. Good luck making any of those things without it.
Some visitors came yesterday. They are (not were) setting up a pilot scale manufacturing facility that was intended to support the Keystone thing. They will complete building their facility this year using money already spent.
See Moving Beyond Oil at www.aesopinstitute.org and read about $50 per barrel diesel from sunlight, water, CO2 and bacteria.
The Introduction to that site outlines a mortal threat to humanity. Once widely understood, 24/7 development, validation and production of revolutionary replacements for fossil fuels can become an urgent priority.
What Obama has given he can easily take away after the election. For now he needs to throw a few crumbs to the progressives and the environmentalists to buy votes. But he won't need progressives, environmentalists, the unemployed or the poor after November.
the keystone oil would still be foreign oil hence wouldn't lessen our dependence on foreign oil. this oil is not targeted for our use anyway and oil is usually sold to the highest bidder in the world anyway.
america seems not to need this oil anyway . check hp article on about 12/31/2011 about the fact that gas and other fuels are now our top export.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/31/united-states-gas-export_n_1177559.html
The real war is against global warming and the trajectory to take the parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere down to a sustainable 350 PPM. (It is now at 392 PPM) Keystone XL would certainly place that goal permanently out of reach. But with so much drilling/mining/deforesting everywhere, and so little political will to promote alternative energy (and zero national discussion/leadership toward calm, scientific and social analysis of where we stand) it is hard to see what the next step might be.
Valero, the key customers of Keystone has explicity detailed an export strategy to its investors. Because Valero's Port Arthur refinery is in a Foreign Trade Zone, the company can carry out its strategy TAX-FREE. Valero has publically disclosed its business model relies on refining heavy sour crude for export. It's upgrading its Port Arthur refinery to process heavy sour into diesel fuel to ship to Latin American and Europe.
There are six companies that have jointly committed to purchase 76% of Keystone's capacity, most located in the Port Arthur free trade zone.
The pipe line is not needed. Since the project was announced, the oil industry acknowledges that higher fuel economy standards and slow economic growth mean declining U.S. oil demand, even as domestic production is booming.
LOL!
At least use real facts, not the false "it's for China" bs.
America. Tankers can't go thru Panama Canal. Look at a map gesss. Anything exported to China would be from our west coast.
There has been "talk" of doing that for thirty years. Who is "they", Panama? It will take decades IF yhey actually ever begin.