The State Department’s long-awaited environmental report on the Keystone XL pipeline leaves President Barack Obama with no real scientific reason to reject the nation’s most fiercely debated energy project.
The sprawling 2,000-page report, released late Friday afternoon, doesn’t issue a clear yea or nay on a sprawling section of pipeline that would traverse from western Canada to Oklahoma. But the report’s key takeaways — including a conclusion that the project would have “no significant impacts to most resources along the proposed Project route” — Obama may have been hemmed in by his own State Department experts.
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Environmentalists were left sputtering Friday while pro-pipeline forces in Congress and industry insisted that this should leave no doubt that the pipeline can be built safely and provide for jobs and a fresh source of North American energy.
“Today’s report again makes clear there is no reason for this critical pipeline to be blocked one more day,” House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement. “After four years of needless delays, it is time for President Obama to stand up for middle-class jobs and energy security and approve the Keystone pipeline.”
The report also counters warnings from environmentalists that the pipeline’s construction would spur a huge increase in production from western Canada’s tar sands, believed to be one of the biggest reserves of crude oil outside Saudi Arabia — unleashing torrents of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Without addressing those emissions overtly, the State Department suggests the issue may be moot because Canada will tap into its lucrative oil sands “with or without the proposed project.” It adds that “approval or denial of the proposed project is unlikely to have a substantial impact on the rate of development in the oil sands, or on the amount of heavy crude oil refined in the Gulf Coast area.”
The report came about a year-and-a-half after the department issued a “final” report in August 2011 on Keystone that said the pipeline would cause minimal environmental impact. After massive White House sit-ins by anti-Keystone protesters followed, leading to arrests of more than 1,200 people, the department announced it would have to take a second look at the pipeline’s impact on sensitive water resources in Nebraska — kicking the issue past the 2012 election.
The pipeline became a durable campaign issue anyway for Republicans and oil industry groups. Mitt Romney repeatedly promised that he would approve Keystone on “Day One” of his administration.
The Sierra Club, one of many environmental groups hoping for a clear thumbs-down, said it was “outraged” by Friday’s outcome .
“We’re mystified as to how the State Department can acknowledge the negative effects of the Earth’s dirtiest oil on our climate, but at the same time claim that the proposed pipeline will ‘not likely result in significant adverse environmental effects,” said Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune, one of dozens of activists who were arrested in an anti-Keystone protest last month after tying himself to the White House gate. “Whether this failure was willful or accidental, this report is nothing short of malpractice.”
Brune later told reporters, “You know the news is bad when it’s buried at 4 p.m. on a Friday afternoon.” He said the State Department’s report will make it tougher for the U.S. to be a global leader on climate change.
Greenpeace Executive Director Phil Radford warned that “letting corporations get rich off of environmental devastation will make Obama’s climate rhetoric look like the worst kind of greenwashing.”