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Archive for March 2nd, 2013
State Dept: Build the Keystone pipeline or not, the oil sands crude will flow
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 2nd, 2013
Time: The State Department issued its long-awaited supplementary environmental impact assessment (SEIS) this afternoon on the Keystone XL pipeline, which would ship up to 830,000 barrels a day of Canadian oil sands crude to the U.S. The full report is some 2,000 pages long--and was released at the very end of the week, thanks very much, State Department--but you can boil it down to one sentence:
Approval or denial of any one crude oil transport project, including the proposed Project, remains unlikely...
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Vermont delegation calls for strict environmental review of tar sands
Posted by Burlington Free Press: Molly Walsh on March 2nd, 2013
Burlington Free Press: All three members of Vermont’s Congressional delegation are asking the federal government to require a strict environmental review should the owner of a New England oil pipeline seek to transport Canadian tar sands oil through its infrastructure in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.
The request was made in a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry dated Feb. 26 and signed by 18 members of Congress, including U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., U.S. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and U.S. Rep. Peter Welch,...
Keystone XL effect on environment seen as minimal, U.S. says
Posted by LA Times: Neela Banerjee on March 2nd, 2013
LA Times: A long-awaited State Department review of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline released Friday concludes that he project would have minimal impact on the environment, increasing the chances it could be approved in the coming months.
The State Department underscored that the study, a supplemental environmental impact statement, is a draft and that it does not offer recommendations for action on the $7-billion project, which would bring petroleum from the oil sands of Alberta, Canada, to refineries...
New Obama admin. report on Keystone XL pipeline has enviros worried
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 2nd, 2013
Mother Jones: On Friday afternoon, the State Department released a draft of its much-anticipated new analysis of the environmental impact of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Although the report makes no firm statement one way or the other about whether the controversial pipeline from Canada to Texas should be approved, some of its conclusions have enviros worried that a greenlight is inevitable.
The administration has spent more than two years considering whether to approve the 1,600-mile pipeline that would...
State Dept. Keystone report plays down climate fears
Posted by Politico: Talia Buford and Darren Goode on March 2nd, 2013
Politico: 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...
US State Department says Keystone XL won’t impact global warming
Posted by Globe and Mail: Shawn Mccarthy on March 2nd, 2013
Globe and Mail: TransCanada Corp.'s proposed Keystone XL pipeline has cleared a significant political hurdle in the United States after a State Department assessment concluded the project would not contribute to the warming of the planet.
Assistant Secretary of State Kerri-Ann Jones cautioned that the department's report, released late Friday, does not provide a recommendation on the project. But activists who oppose the pipeline condemned the work as a "botch job" that unduly minimizes the environmental impacts,...
Environmentalists diss State Dept.’s Keystone pipeline review
Posted by USA Today: Wendy Koch on March 2nd, 2013
USA Today: The State Department riled environmentalists with a largely positive review Friday of a controversial Canada-to-U.S. pipeline, saying the project would not significantly alter the development of Canada's tar sands.
In its long-awaited draft environmental review of the Keystone XL, the State Department said the pipeline won't make much of a difference to climate change because the tar sands will likely be developed anyway. "Approval or denial of the proposed project is unlikely to have a substantial...
Climate change putting stress on Kansas water resources
Posted by Lawrence Journal World: Peter Hancock on March 2nd, 2013
Lawrence Journal World: The current drought gripping all of Kansas and much of the western United States may seem severe now, but it is not abnormal for a region that has seen cyclical droughts for much of the last 1,000 years.
What ought to concern Kansans more, a panel of experts said during a symposium Friday night at Kansas University, is the longer-term change in the region’s climate that will put greater demand on the state’s dwindling water resources.
“From a climate perspective, it looks like it’s going to...
State Department Keystone XL Pipeline Analysis Disspirits Climate Change Community
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 2nd, 2013
Huffington Post: Environmentalists are fuming over the conclusion from the State Department that the Keystone XL pipeline -- a fiercely-debated proposal to transport heavy crude from Alberta's oil sands deposits 1,700 miles to the U.S. Gulf Coast -- would be "environmentally sound."
The government claims in the report released on Friday that the pipeline project wouldn't significantly alter climate change. Such an assessment is at odds with the warnings of experts and advocates -- more than 40,000 of whom recently...
State Department Again Sees No Environmental Barriers to Keystone Pipeline
Posted by New York Times: Andrew C. Revkin on March 2nd, 2013
New York Times: The State Department`s revised supplemental environmental impact statement on the proposed 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline is out, and offers very little that Secretary of State John Kerry or President Obama might use as a reason to reject the plan.
You can best gauge the reaction of various factions on Twitter using the #noKXL and #keystoneXL tags.
The voluminous report includes this blunt conclusion on the inconsequential nature of the pipeline if one`s interest is in reducing extraction...