Is Keystone XL DOA in Term No. 2?
With the campaign and its associated vote-reaping rhetoric behind him, President Obama may now feel it’s time to kill the Keystone XL pipeline once and for all.
At least that’s what environmental groups are gunning for — and what Obama’s secretary of State nominee would be happy to do.
The Canada-to-Gulf pipeline cleared a major hurdle Friday when Nebraska’s Department of Environmental Quality issued a report finding that the pipeline’s route through the state would carry “minimal” risks to the environment.
Obama frequently used Nebraska’s concerns about the pipeline route as the reason for last year’s rejection of the project in the face of a congressional deadline. Now, the Republican governor of the state, Dave Heineman, has less than a month to make a final recommendation based on the report’s findings.
That includes noting Keystone XL will bring $418.1 million in economic benefits to the state and is expected to have no impact on water quality.
Heineman has been an opponent of the pipeline in the past, but a new route that addressed previous environmental concerns could have the White House scrambling for a new excuse.
TransCanada, the company behind Keystone, said it worked with Nebraskans to arrive at the solutions detailed in the approved report.
“The re-route ensures Keystone XL will have minimal environmental impact by avoiding the area defined as the Nebraska Sandhills, crossing fewer miles of threatened and endangered species habitat and considerably fewer miles of erodible soils. It also moves the route to the down-slope side of two wellhead protection areas,” said Russell Girling, TransCanada’s president and chief executive officer.
“Over the past year, support for Keystone XL has continued to grow in Nebraska and across the United States,” he added. “Safety remains our top priority. We will maintain a Nebraska-based emergency preparedness program with a response team in place, ready to react should an incident occur. The safety of the entire pipeline is our responsibility for as long as it operates. It’s a responsibility we take very seriously.”
More than 70 environmental groups, though, wrote Obama yesterday to urge that he take his responsibility to kill the pipeline seriously.
The green groups pointed out the president’s post-Sandy vows to tackle climate change in his second term.
“Climate change is not a hoax. More drought and floods and hurricanes and wildfires are not a joke,” Obama said just after his election in Chicago. “They’re a threat to our children’s future. And we can do something about it.”
The groups — including Greenpeace, Defenders of Wildlife, the Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club, and League of Conservation Voters — specifically urge the president to “use your executive authority” in enacting new regulations.
20,000 jobs on the line, but hey, the new norm of unemployment is 7.8%, so why would he care? He’d be pushing Canada to deal with China, but again, why would he care? He’d be increasing our energy independence, but hey, he doesn’t care.
Real unemployment, honestly counted, is over 20%.
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts
Environmentalists, this President and the Democrats would rather see people disappear from the planet so the environment could prosper. They don’t care about the misery of people but just the power that they have. We could have jobs, and possibly lower oil prices but this administration doesn’t care.
What a picture. The horse face doesn’t even know how to do a remotely proper military salute. Anyone who kept ‘saluting’ like that in army basic would still be doing pushups.
He was a commissioned navy pogue. Nuff said.
Kerry is a flag holder for the agenda. He is not a Nationalist. Just like Hillery, or Holder. He loves UN puke blue.
“Climate change is not a hoax. More drought and floods and hurricanes and wildfires are not a joke,” Obama said just after his election in Chicago. “They’re a threat to our children’s future. And we can do something about it.”
“Climate Change” (the name was changed from “Global Warming” for obvious reasons) as peddled by money grubbing people like Al Gorezera and power mad people like Insane-Hussein Obama is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated in the history of the planet.
Able to guzzle more energy than dozens of normal men! Producing more hot air than a locomotive!! Able to pile up carbon credits higher than a tall building in a single bound!!! Look UP in the sky! It’s ChickenLittle! It’s FlyingSnakeOilSalesman! It’s the Sultan of Hanging Chads! It’s the Ayatollah of Heat! It’s the High Priest of the Inquisition! It’s the Doctor of Doom! No, it’s CarbonMan in a private jet painted green! And now following in the tradition of other great men such as Jimmy Carter and Yasir Arafat, he is the proud recipient of a Nobel Prize!!! CarbonMan, strange visitor from an alternate reality who came to Earth with claims and scary predictions far beyond those of any sane and honest man, disguised as Fat Albert, and now joined by other members of the Royal GreenLeague such as BioFuelHummerMan and EcoCleaningWoman, they all fight a never ending battle for science-fiction, hypocrisy, power grabbing, money grubbing and the Hollywood way!
Feral Cat:
If VDH was to take a hit of windowpane acid (LSD)…
Well, I think we would get you.
Welcome aboard my friend.
charles
“What’s this?” thought Barack Obama. “I can feel nothing warmer at all! That is terrible. Am I stupid? Am I a flat-earther? Am I a denier? Am I not fit to be President? That would be the most dreadful thing that could happen to me. “Oh, it is very hot!” Obama said aloud. “It has my highest approbation.” And Obama nodded in a contented way, and gazed outside, for he would not say that he felt no Global Warming. The whole entourage that he had with him tried and tried but felt no warming, any more than the rest; but, like Barack Obama they said, “It is so hot!” and Rahm Emanuel counseled him to always say that he felt hot when he was out in public, even hotter than all the Eric Holder and ACORN troubles were making them both feel. “It is warm, hot even!” went from mouth to mouth. On all sides there seemed to be general warming, and Barack Obama gave Al Gore the title of Imperial Master of Global Warming Science.
So Barack Obama went in procession, and every one in the streets said, “How incomparable hot it is! What a hot day it is!” No one would let it be perceived that he could not feel warming, for that would have shown that he was not fit for his office, or was very stupid or a flat-earther or a denier. No day of Barack Obama’s had ever been as hot as this one.
“But I’m freezing my ass off out here!!!” a little child cried out at last. “Just hear what that innocent says!” said the father: and one whispered to another what the child had said. “But it is cold out here!” said the whole people at length. That touched Barack Obama, for it seemed to him that they were right; but the thought within himself was, “I must go through with feeling all the Global Warming. I do not dare to do otherwise” And so he held himself a little higher, which was very difficult for him to do with all the bowing to dictators that he has been doing, and his aides held on tighter than ever, and proclaimed the Global Warming which did not exist at all.
What Obama’s Nominations Mean: The Military Is Being Downsized, But CIA Covert Operations Are Gearing Up Global Research, January 08, 2013
http://www.globalresearch.ca/what-obamas-nominations-mean-the-military-is-being-downsized-but-cia-covert-operations-are-gearing-up/5318140
Obama is more into murder by remote control with his drones. Maybe that was why he never let anyone see his college records, because during time there he was playing video games all the time. Hence his love of the new drone army. Seem’s that he needs to add to his army of robots, the leftoids haven’t gotten him to King of the World fast enough.
The Obama administration is all about money & power. He & company don’t give a hoot about the middle & poor classes.
Keystone XL will be built despite the phoney objections. Why? Because Susan Rice, our current UN Ambassador, along with her Canadian husband owns many shares of TransCanada & other Canadian companies involved with Keystone.
Does anyone really think that Susan Rice is the only one in this administration who stands to make a killing when this pipeline gets built?
Look-it all about increasing your personal net worth
Al Gore railed about Arabs and oil to get votes-to get money
Once he no longer needed the votes he used the same scam to sell a book and a film and get a seat on the BoD of Apple and Google-he made a $ billion from those stock options.
His wife dumped him because he was screwing massage-rs-he lost 1/2 his net worth
What the heck-so he sold his TV network to an Arab/oil state for $100 milion
Follow the money
-at least Gore did it legally and did not steal, fraud and rip off like the Madoff tribe/gang does
I’m confused – will someone, anyone, grow some balls? I do not live in Ne, but I will be happy to move there to defend the state of Nebraska’s right to provide for its citizens. ignore the veto from the O, use the National Guard or armed militias(where have I heard that?), to get the pipeline built. ignore the mandate of the Fed, if the environmental whackos live in Ne, let them protest – not sure I see the problem, as long as we are talking about the Constitution being DOA.
I think we’re gonna have other priorities before Obama’s second term is over.
Can North Dakota sign a treaty with Canada, and just build that segment without State’s approval?
What would Obama do? Order the Greenpeace Militia to shoot on sight?
Is there not a Native American reservation on the border? That is sovereign territory.
Where are creative mapmakers once they finish gerrymandering?
It’s just so infuriating to see what the environmentalists have created: a monster lobbying machine that fails to recognize the benefits of a 20-30 year transition using North American hydrocarbons. Surely they know that algae-breakthrough is not happening next month?
Why is everything now such a hyper-battle?
Part of the problem is the Native Americans. Most of the tribes living along the pipeline route don’t want it built because the construction process may dig-up burial sites of deceased Indians. They have other, mostly economic, complaints as well.
I wonder if the Keystone XL project could be redesigned slightly to transport oil from the Bakken Shale Formation in North Dakota to the gulf coast. http://geology.com/usgs/bakken-formation-oil.shtml Because it wouldn’t cross the US-Canada border, it wouldn’t require State Department approval during the reign of Obama. After Obama, build the extension into Canada.
Hold on, Kids! Too many of our conservative, uh, compatriots, stayed home in 2012, again, and there’s nothing for it but to watch, learn, and ride’er out. Four more years. John Kerry at State. Sean Penn at Defense — no, wait, that would be the GOP pariah, Chuck Hagel. Anti-Semitism raises its ugly head YET again in OUR time. Europe and the Arab-Muslim world rejoices. I don’t know why our Jewish brothers bother penning their Holocaust memoirs and building their Holocaust museums and memorials. Irrational hatreds run deep. “We will never forget” — Yeah, that’s the problem: we do forget.
On December 7, 1941, 2,403 American lives were lost. A day that will live in infamy. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, 2,499 Americans lost their lives.
On September 11, 2001 2,977 unarmed, unsuspecting American civilians were murdered by eleven Muslim terrorists.
We — America — promised to never forget that atrocity. But the MSM and their allies in Hollywood and Academe have carefully seen to it that our memories have been dulled and confused and conflicted. We said that we never would, but we *have* indeed forgotten mcuh of what transpired on the bloodiest foreign assault on U.S. territory (by far) in American history.
There is no “9/11 Day” commemoration date on our calendars — and who do you think has seen to that?
But I digress, I wonder. Do we still assign _The Diary of Anne Frank_ as basic reading in our public schools? Six million Jews died in the Holocaust of WWII. In WWIII, the same number looks to be annihilated in the Jewish birthplace of Israel, unless somebody, some people, some nation or alliance of nations, does something to stop it.
You, mr. Obama, are the real “threat to our children’s future”
“More specifically, the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is not in our national interest because it would unlock vast amounts of additional carbon that we can’t afford to burn, extend our dangerous addiction to fossil fuels, endanger health and safety, and put critical water resources at risk,” they write.
Irrespective of what happens with Keystone, those tar sands *will* be exploited. It’s a *Canadian* resource, and if the US isn’t interested, they’ll work with someone who is: China. So those US-based environmental groups, if they manage to get Keystone killed, may emerge feeling morally righteous (or smug) and triumphant, will have accomplished … nothing. Canada will get the jobs, China will get the oil, and the US will import the oil it needs from less friendly countries.
“From England to the USA: “The whole world is relying on the United States Citizens”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2NSKoITLIY&feature=player_embedded
John Francois is being nominated for Secretary of State, not Secretary of the Interior or Environmental Secretary. His job concerns foreign affairs, not the environment. What the hell does he have to do with Keystone?
The Canadians are having a rough time trying to find someone to buy their oil sands. They threatened a trade war with the EU last year when Brussels contemplated ranking their oil as dirty. They were big supporters of Kyoto until they couldn’t meet their obligations and bailed to avoid the fine — drawing criticism from China and India. The US delay due to environmental concerns forced to Canadians to explore deals with China and that’s not going too smoothly for them as they begin to learn what the Australians already know — the Chinese are more hard nosed than the US their accustomed to. At the moment TransCanada’s competitor Enbridge is working with the Chinese to build a pipeline on Canadian soil from Alberta to the West Coast. The provinces are squabbling over revenue and environment impact and the Chinese have told Canada that if they don’t get the pipeline built the oil sands “will become irrelevant.” The Keystone XL pipeline would bring the oil to Texas refineries where it’s then shipped to China anyway. I wouldn’t rush to build this pipeline after seeing how Enbridge treated last year’s spill in Michigan. So if the Canadians want to deal with China, build the pipeline on their soil and assume the risk and reward. If the US ramps up it’s own oil production we’ll need the refinery capacity in Texas available for processing our own resources, maybe even have enough left over to sell to China ourselves.
There is an alternative to the Keystone pipeline, and that is shipping the oil by rail, which we do routinely in the US. In fact, Warren Buffet’s Burlington Northern subsidiary is a prime beneficiary of this, and he would likely benefit further if the Keystone pipeline is not built.
A map of the affected area near Ft. McMurray, Alberta, Canada — the center of the tars sands area, reveals that there is a rail line linking it with Edmonton, and therefore throughout Canada (Ft. McMurray is northeast of Edmonton) http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/maps/economic/transportation/pm_r. There is no reason a rail link could not then hook up with an American rail line. One would think that our existing trade agreements with Canada already provide for the movement of various other resources between the two countries by rail. Of course, liberals will find some objection to this.
Aside from the mode of transportation, there is a practical way that Republicans could force the approval of the Keystone pipeline — by attaching it to a must-pass piece of legislation, such as the debt-ceiling agreement, or any large appropriations bill. All Republicans would have to do is stand firm, call Obambi’s bluff, and be willing to shut the government down while the child-bully throws a tantrum because he doesn’t get his way. The question is the resolve of Republicans to do the right thing. Admittedly, that is an open question.