Boehner spokesman: 'The standard the president set today should lead to speedy approval of the Keystone pipeline'

Obama’s Pipeline Comments Send Mixed Messages

By Tennille Tracy

Getty Images

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks as he unveils his plan on climate change June 25, 2013 at Georgetown University in Washington.

WSJ.COM 6/26/13: President Barack Obama’s unexpected mention of the Keystone XL pipeline in his climate-change speech Tuesday gave the appearance of pledging a tough line on the project’s environmental impact. But his comments were embraced by Keystone supporters, who said the pipeline has already met the president’s standards.

Standing outside Georgetown University in a blanket of heat that left him wiping sweat off his forehead, Mr. Obama said Keystone will be approved “only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.”

Both supporters and opponents of Keystone were quick to claim victory and said Mr. Obama signaled a decision in their favor. But Keystone’s climate impact, while still debated, has been largely determined already by the U.S. State Department.

In March, the department released a draft environmental review that said construction of Keystone would have a relatively small impact on climate change.

The department’s analysis went something like this: The process of producing Canada’s oil sands, which is what Keystone would be carrying, emits more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional types of crude oil. But if Keystone is denied, energy companies will simply find alternative ways of getting the oil sands to market. So the pipeline itself has a limited impact on emissions.

Based on that review, “the standard the president set today should lead to speedy approval of the Keystone pipeline,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio).

“We welcome the fact that President Obama seems to be finally acknowledging the value of the Keystone XL pipeline,” said Charles Drevna, president of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers. “We hope his statement means the State Department will immediately approve the pipeline.”

Environmental groups walked away with an entirely different impression, however, demonstrating how eager both sides are to win a battle that has raged for years. “As it is clear that the pipeline will increase net carbon emissions, we look forward to the president rejecting the permit,’ said Damon Moglen, a director at the environmental group Friends of the Earth.

The White House declined to elaborate on Mr. Obama’s comments.

The State Department has not yet finalized its environmental review and could still make changes to its analysis. The Environmental Protection Agency told the department in April that it should scrutinize the feasibility of alternative transport methods.

If approved, the Keystone pipeline would provide a key conduit for Canada’s oil sands to reach refineries in the Gulf Coast, becoming the last link in a network of pipelines stretching from Canada to Texas. A final decision on the project could come before the end of the year.

WSJ: Keystone XL pipeline could cause warming of an infinitesimal 0.00001°C/yr

Related: Wacko James Hansen says the Keystone XL pipeline would be "essentially game over"

The Keystone XL Objections Wither Away

Science says the oil pipeline will be safe. But approval isn't certain.

By PAUL C. KNAPPENBERGER

WSJ.COM  1/25/13:  It has been a busy week for the much-delayed Keystone XL oil pipeline. The proposed project, intended to carry heavy crude oil from Canada's Alberta tar sands to refineries along the U.S. Gulf Coast, won approval on Tuesday from Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, after its planned route had been adjusted to address environmental concerns. The following day, 53 senators signed a letter to President Obama urging speedy federal approval. "There's no reason to deny or further delay this long-studied project," the senators said.

Let's hope the president listens. It was also this week that the State Department, which is reviewing the TransCanada Corp. project, announced that it would not reveal its findings until the spring. The department had previously promised an announcement by the end of March.

Environmentalists, who in the past have had Mr. Obama's ear, continue to voice strong opposition to the Keystone XL project. An anti-pipeline rally is being organized for next month in Washington, D.C.

But the arguments against the pipeline have all but evaporated. The route now largely bypasses the most ecologically sensitive regions. The overall contribution of its activity to global warming is too small to measure. It is time for the project to move forward.

According to the State Department, which has final say because the pipeline crosses the border with Canada, the project must be determined to be "in the national interest." The department defines that as projects that "facilitate the efficient movement of legitimate goods and travelers across U.S. borders" so long as they are within "the context of appropriate border security, safety, health, and environmental requirements."

The Keystone XL pipeline, as it is now proposed, certainly meets all of these criteria. The new route, which bypasses the environmentally fragile Sand Hills region of Nebraska, was approved after a report this month by the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality determined that it will have "minimal environmental impacts" if properly managed.

A study last year by the Congressional Research Service found that the greenhouse-gas emissions from energy produced from Canadian tar-sands oil delivered by the pipeline would increase U.S. annual greenhouse gas emissions by a paltry 0.06%-0.3%. These additional emissions have virtually no impact on the rate of global warming, increasing it by an infinitesimal 0.00001 degrees Celsius per year. This amount is too small to detect, much less to worry about.

The last and perhaps most desperate argument from opponents is that the pipeline will demonstrate the viability of the Canadian tar-sands deposits and unleash an oil rush that will ultimately result in sufficient greenhouse-gas emissions to push global warming beyond some critical limit. This is nonsense.

Any such limit is simply a human construct—the more pessimistic you are, the less global warming you're willing to tolerate. But everyone can take comfort in new scientific research that revises down the future warming for each unit increase in greenhouse-gas emissions. This means that current estimates of how much warming is locked up in the Canadian tar sands is exaggerated.

Neither are the benefits of tar sands an unproven secret that the Keystone XL pipeline will reveal. The Canadian tar sands—sandy deposits with oil in them—are already an important global oil resource. Production has tripled since the mid-1990s, with most of the oil exported to the U.S. through a network of existing cross-border pipelines.

Keystone XL's sister pipeline, simply known as Keystone, started delivering oil in 2010 to refineries in Illinois. There are a number of proposals in Canada to develop routes to deliver the tar-sands oil to burgeoning markets in Asia.

The expansion of tar-sands development will happen with or without the approval of Keystone XL. A likely consequence of U.S. rejection of the pipeline would be acceleration of the establishment of an Asian outlet.

Opponents are trying to cast the Keystone XL pipeline as a symbol of the type of energy development that the president—with his newly dusted-off promise for action on climate change—must act to stop. But the symbol we need is of leadership and presidential approval of the pipeline—a sign that substance, rather than style, underlies determinations of "the national interest."

Mr. Knappenberger is assistant director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute.

NYT Op Ed: Hansen & McKibben are 'utterly boneheaded'

How Not to Fix Climate Change

By JOE NOCERA 2/18/13

After much back and forth, James E. Hansen and I had agreed on a date to meet. Hansen, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is the scientist most closely associated with climate change activists like Bill McKibben, who has led the charge against the Keystone XL pipeline, and Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club. In Hansen’s view, the country needs to start moving away from fossil fuels now, before the damage becomes irreversible.

As regular readers know, I believe the Obama administration should approve the Keystone pipeline, which would transport oil mined and processed from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. Like it or not, fossil fuels are going to remain the world’s dominant energy source for the foreseeable future, and we are far better off getting our oil from Canada than, say, Venezuela. And the climate change effects of tar sands oil are, all in all, pretty small. I had the strong sense that Hansen hoped that once we met, I would begin to see the error of my ways.

The date we set was on Thursday, Feb. 14. The only glitch, he said, is that on the 13th, he was participating in an anti-Keystone demonstration in front of the White House led by his friend McKibben. The plan was they’d all try to get arrested. “It is conceivable that we will be spending the night of the 13th in the clink, in which case it is not clear when I will arrive on the 14th,” Hansen wrote in an e-mail. (He added, “Yes, I know, the merits of this continuing activity may be dubious, but Bill is working his butt off so hard that I can’t refuse.”) I postponed the meeting.

Suddenly, it appears, the Keystone XL pipeline, which President Obama temporarily blocked during his re-election campaign, is back in the news. The State of Nebraska, which had previously opposed the pipeline, recently dropped its opposition after TransCanada, the company hoping to build it, rerouted portions of it to avoid sensitive lands and aquifers. Canada, still miffed by Obama’s rejection of the pipeline last year, is threatening to sell the oil to China if the United States says no again.

In fact, this should be a no-brainer for the president, for all the reasons I stated earlier, and one more: the strategy of activists like McKibben, Brune and Hansen, who have made the Keystone pipeline their line in the sand, is utterly boneheaded.

Brune and McKibben have been very clear about what they hope to accomplish. Oil companies have invested upward of $100 billion to extract the unconventional oil in the sands. A pipeline is the only way to export it. The Keystone pipeline is Canada’s Plan A. Plan B is a pipeline to British Columbia, which would get the oil to China. If the president blocks Keystone, and the First Nation tribes continue their staunch opposition to the western pipeline, then Canada will have the second largest oil reserves in the world — and no place to sell it. The assumption of the activists is that by choking off the supply of new oil sources like the tar sands, the U.S. — and maybe the world — will be forced to transition more quickly to green energy.

Can you see how backward this logic is? As Adam Brandt, an energy expert at Stanford University, pointed out to me recently, so long as the demand is there, energy producers are going to search for new supplies of fossil fuel — many of them using unconventional means like tar sands extraction. “With growing global demand, the economic pressure to develop unconventional resources is enormous and not going away,” he said. “Can environmental groups expect to win a series of fights for decades to come, when the economic forces are aligned very strongly against them in each round?” The answer is obvious: no. The emphasis should be on demand, not supply. If the U.S. stopped consuming so much of the world’s oil, the economic need for the tar sands would evaporate.

On Monday, I finally spoke to Hansen. His knowledge and sincerity are easy to admire, even if his tactics are not. He told me he would like to see oil companies pay a fee, which would rise annually, based on carbon emissions. He said that such a tax could reduce emissions by 30 percent within 10 years. Well, maybe. But it would also likely make the expensive tar sands oil more viable. If you really want to eliminate expensive new fossil fuel sources, the best way is to lower the price of oil, which would render them uneconomical. But, of course, that wouldn’t exactly lower demand either.

In any case, McKibben, Hansen and others were arrested on Wednesday, as planned. They spent a few hours in jail and paid $100 fines. And that was it.

Until the next time, of course.

US State Dept: Only 2% difference in CO2 emissions from oil sands vs. Venezuelan crude

The key claim of environmentalists opposing the Keystone XL pipeline is that oil produced from the Canadian  oil sands produces much more greenhouse gases than conventional oil production. However, the environmental impact report released from the US State Dept. concludes there is a mere 2% difference in CO2 emissions from oil sands production vs. the Venezuelan crude currently refined on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Keystone Pipeline Poses 'No Significant Impacts' To Most Resources Along Path, US Says
WSJ.com 8/26/11
By TENNILLE TRACY And EDWARD WELSCH

The U.S. government on Friday concluded that a controversial oil pipeline extension that TransCanada Corp. wants to build from Alberta to Texas wouldn't pose a significant threat to U.S. resources along the pipeline corridor, in a determination supporters said builds momentum for final approval.

The findings, released by the U.S. State Department, will play a key role in the federal government's decision to either approve or deny construction of the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline. A decision is expected by year-end.

The Keystone XL pipeline extension, under U.S. review since 2008, would pass through six U.S. states and have the capacity to transport about 1 million barrels of oil a day.

The State Department's review "reaffirmed the environmental integrity of the project," TransCanada said in a statement. The review process "has been the most exhaustive and detailed review for a cross-border pipeline that has ever been undertaken by the Department of State."

Environmental groups have been vocal opponents, in large part because the pipeline will be used to transport oil from Canadian oil sands, which emit more greenhouse gases during production than other types of oil. The groups are also opposed to mining in Canadian wilderness and are concerned about spill risks along the pipeline route.

The Canadian oil sands contain 170 billion barrels in heavy crude oil, the world's third-largest deposit, and are in northeastern Alberta.

The State Department downplayed the significance of its newly released environmental review, saying it will also weigh the economic impact of the pipeline, as well as energy security questions and foreign policy concerns, before making a final determination.

"This is not the rubber stamp for this project," said Kerri-Ann Jones, an assistant secretary at the State Department.

Observers said the environmental review finding is significant. "If the State Department now has what it sees as a supportive environmental statement, I don't see how they can turn down this project," said BMO Capital Markets analyst Carl Kirst.

The State Department outlined some risks from the project, including the potential for spills along the pipeline route, which goes over a large Midwestern underground water source called the Ogallala Aquifer. But the department concluded a spill would only affect a small area.

"In no spill incident scenario would the entire ... aquifer system be adversely affected," the study said.

The department study also conceded the key environmental claim that oil sands produce more greenhouse gases than other oils, but said the carbon dioxide emissions from oil sands are only 2% higher than the Venezuelan crude currently refined on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had objected to the State Department's draft environmental impact statement on the grounds that it needed to do a more complete analysis of oil sands' greenhouse gas emissions.

The EPA as well as members of the public will have a chance to comment on the report.

The release of the State Department's review coincides with multiday protests in front of the White House in which more than 300 people have been arrested.

Protesters are urging President Barack Obama to block the pipeline. "The document still fails to address the key concerns for landowners and wildlife," Jim Lyon, National Wildlife Federation senior vice president, said, adding a legal challenge is possible.

Canada is the largest supplier of oil to the U.S., exporting some 2 million barrels a day to its southern neighbor. About half of Canada's oil production comes from the oil sands. Proponents of the pipeline extension say Canada is a more politically stable and environmentally responsible oil producer than other sources of U.S. oil imports.

Without the Keystone expansion or other pipelines built out of western Canada, Canada will run out of spare pipeline capacity near the end of the decade, according to a study by consulting firm EnSys Energy released last year.

However, EnSys concluded that even if Keystone isn't built, other pipelines will support the continued growth of the oil sands industry.

Jobs in the Pipeline

The EPA tries to scuttle oil transport from Canada

Review & Outlook WSJ.com 7/7/11

With 9.1% unemployment and gasoline prices in the stratosphere, President Obama must sometimes wish that some big corporation would suddenly show up and offer a shovel-ready, multibillion-dollar project to create 100,000 jobs and reduce U.S. reliance on oil from dictatorships.

Oh, wait. His Secretary of State has had that offer sitting on her desk since she was sworn in. The trouble is that the Administration can't approve it without upsetting its anti-fossil fuel constituency. And so the proposal sits.

In September 2008 TransCanada applied to build a new pipeline—the Keystone XL—to bring diluted bitumen from the oil-rich tar sands of Alberta to thirsty American refineries on the Gulf Coast. It is hardly a radical proposal. Canadian crude has been flowing to the U.S. for decades. Another Canadian company—Enbridge—operates the Clipper pipeline across the Canadian border to Chicago. In July 2010 TransCanada began operating its Keystone pipeline from Alberta to Cushing, Oklahoma, which is a major storage and pricing depot.

The Keystone XL would cut a slightly different path, through the American heartland to Port Arthur, Texas. Judging from its past experience and that of Enbridge, TransCanada expected that permitting would take roughly 23 months. Thirty-three months, two State Department studies and 208,000 public comments later, TransCanada is still waiting. On current trend, the company will be lucky to get its permit by January, or after 40 months. But even that is far from certain.

If Mr. Obama were drawing up a plan from scratch to boost union employment and deflate Iranian-ally Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, it might look like the Keystone XL. TransCanada estimates that building the pipeline will mean more than $20 billion—$13 billion from TransCanada itself—in investment and 13,000 new American jobs in construction and related manufacturing. The company also expects more than 118,000 "spin-off" jobs during the two years of construction.

TransCanada says it has signed building contracts with four major U.S. unions. It projects that construction will generate $600 million in new state and local tax revenue and that over its life the pipeline will generate another $5.2 billion in property taxes. The Energy Policy Research Foundation in Washington estimates that by linking to the XL, oil producers in North Dakota's Bakken region will enjoy efficiency gains of between $36.5 million and $146 million annually. Lower transport costs will mean savings for Gulf Coast refiners of $473 million annually if the pipeline meets conservative expectations of shipping 400,000 barrels per day.

WSJ: President veto & his oil-by-rail boom

President Veto

The Keystone veto is not a governing strategy but an act of isolation.

Feb. 24, 2015 6:51 p.m. ET

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

White House aides are whispering that President Obama ’s veto of the Keystone XL pipeline authorization bill signals a new phase of his Presidency, and we suppose they’re right. He’ll finish out his tenure as a Howard Hughes-like penthouse recluse who is ever more withdrawn from the political and economic center.

The legislation to build the Keystone XL pipeline that Mr. Obama rejected Tuesday enjoys a broad bipartisan consensus, including support from nine Senate Democrats and 28 in House. Business, labor unions, most consumers, and ally and trading partner Canada are also in favor of this $8 billion infrastructure project, which will create jobs, strengthen North American energy security and increase prosperity.

Mr. Obama is refusing these benefits to bow to the environmental-left fringe that opposes all carbon energy. The reason he gave in a quiet veto message to Congress—no speech, no cameras—was that the bill “cuts short thorough consideration of issues that could bear on our national interest.” The Keystone has been in regulatory limbo for about 2,300 days in perhaps the most extensive permitting review in the history of American government.

Aside from his green billionaire friends, we suspect Mr. Obama also wanted to frustrate what happens to be an incidental Republican priority: The House is 11 votes and the Senate merely five votes short of the two-thirds majority necessary for a override.

The Washington press corps is all but filing profiles of Mr. Obama’s veto pen (a Cross Townsend roller-ball) and explaining that his wall of vetoes against anything that comes out of Congress is his “strategy” for the next two years. The better way of putting is that Mr. Obama will leave office increasingly isolated, obstructionist and partisan.

Obama’s Oil-by-Rail Boom

Activists get their jollies blocking pipeline construction, but the crude still flows through your neighborhood.

An oil-train derailment near LaSalle, Colo., May 9, 2014. 

By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.  Feb. 24, 2015  THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

It’s better to be lucky than good. President Obama, who arrived promising to heal the planet and halt the rising seas, instead presided over a fossil-fuel renaissance in America. If you were unemployed and found a decent job in Obama’s economy, there’s a good chance it was a fracking job. If things are finally looking up for the middle class, cheap gas is a major contributor.

He was lucky again on July 6, 2013. Thanks to various competing news stories (a plane crash in San Francisco, the Trayvon Martin shooting trial), Americans did not dwell on a fiery oil-train accident in Canada that killed 47. For if there’s one boom Mr. Obama can claim authorship of, it’s the oil-by-rail boom.

A business that barely existed when he took office now moves an impressive million barrels a day. The oil pouring forth from America’s resurgent fields, after all, has to reach market somehow. And as the Journal explained in December, political opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline has “emboldened resistance to at least 10 other pipeline projects across North America. . . . The groups coordinate their moves in regular conference calls and at meetings in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.”

The publication Energy Monitor Worldwide elaborated in September: “Environmentalists and governments are making it more and more difficult to get approval to build pipelines, so producers are increasingly using rail to get their oil to refineries for processing into products that the American public needs. . . . If all the railcars carrying crude oil on a single day were hitched together to a single locomotive, that train would be about 17 miles long.”

Yes, oil can move by ship, but America’s 94-year-old Jones Act, a law cherished by Democrats and labor unions, makes it prohibitively expensive. If the goal is to move U.S.-produced oil to U.S. markets without some gimmicky side-trip through the European refining industry, that leaves rail.

All the more newsy, then, is Mr. Obama’s unsurprising veto of bipartisan legislation that would have authorized the Keystone XL pipeline. Opposing Keystone, it goes without saying, will not make the slightest difference to things opponents claim to care about. It will not alter by an infinitesimal fraction of a degree mankind’s reliance on fossil fuels or the continued development of hydrocarbon resources.

It will, however, give fresh impetus to America’s oil-by-rail boom.

Oregon, a state whose green bona fides are not in doubt, has already approved $6.9 million in public subsidies to expand rail capacity to receive Bakken crude from North Dakota and redistribute it on Columbia River barges.

Kansas City Southern is building a new Texas rail terminal capable of receiving two 120-car trains per day of Canadian heavy crude. Ten oil trains a day already trundle through downtown Philadelphia to the city’s reborn refinery industry.

The International Energy Agency forecasts that North America will invest $2.5 trillion in oil infrastructure over the next 20 years, of which Keystone would have represented just 0.3%. More of those dollars now will be spent to build oil-by-rail infrastructure, less to build pipeline infrastructure, although most experts consider pipeline a safer way to transport oil.

Not to worry, however. In all likelihood, a tragedy like the accident that wiped out the Canadian town of Lac-Mégantic 20 months ago won’t recur. Railroads have steadily gained experience to handle their explosive windfall without major disaster. But, as we are reminded every few weeks, trains will still derail, oil will spill, and messes will have to be cleaned up.

Which raises a question: What are Mr. Obama’s true policy convictions, if any?

After the midterm elections, we might have expected him to try to tempt the new Republican majority with a tax-reform deal in return for a carbon tax. Even if the effort didn’t bear immediate fruit, the way would be pointed toward a long-term bargain to restore growth while addressing climate-change fears.

We also would have expected him finally to wave through the Keystone pipeline, if only out of irritation with green allies for tormenting him over a phony symbolic issue.

Wrong on both counts. Polls show the public supports the pipeline; labor wants the jobs. But for Mr. Obama, the balancing factor is clearly the criticism he would receive from the Sierra Club, the hostile tweets that might be directed at him from millennials, and the money that a handful of green billionaires might redirect to the Clinton Foundation rather than Mr. Obama’s own post-presidential occupations.

What seems absent from his calculations are any practical considerations outside the political bubble, such as the millions of barrels of flammable liquid that will be rumbling through America’s residential neighborhoods aboard mile-long oil trains.

Will Obama side with science and jobs, or with green religionists on Keystone?

No More Keystone Excuses

Will Obama side with science and jobs, or with green religionists?

WSJ.COM  3/4/13: President Obama's spokesmen claim that cutting $43 billion out of a $3.8 trillion federal budget this year will be an economic disaster, though investors seem unconcerned. But if Mr. Obama wants shovel-ready spending stimulus today, why doesn't he finally approve the Keystone XL pipeline? It won't cost taxpayers a dime.

On Friday the pipeline from Canada through six U.S. states to the Gulf Coast received another boost when a State Department study found there would be no significant damage to the environment. This follows Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman's endorsement in January of a revised pipeline route that now skirts around the Sand Hills region of his state. All of which means the White House has run out of excuses to keep delaying approval of a $5.3 billion private investment that would provide some 16,000 direct jobs and more downstream.

The State Department study, the fourth such U.S. review in four years, found once again that the pipeline wouldn't make much difference to climate change. The Alberta tar sands are the world's third largest reservoir of oil, and Canada is going to develop them one way or another.

All told the oil sands contribute a mere 0.01% of global carbon emissions, and if that sort of thing bothers you, Canada is offsetting that with carbon-reduction policies elsewhere. State's report concludes that the pipeline would result in "no substantial change in global greenhouse gas emissions."

Reuters

The Keystone Oil Pipeline is pictured under construction in North Dakota.

If the Alberta oil doesn't flow south to America via the Keystone XL, it will flow west to China via other pipelines or rail. It will also flow to the Gulf Coast by other means, including pipelines and rail to East Coast ports, and then via tankers in the Atlantic and around Florida. Keystone XL will have a smaller "carbon footprint" than these alternatives.

As for the danger of spills, the high-tech pipeline will be buried underground and contain valves that allow for rapid detection and shutoff. The environmental risk is arguably greater on a tanker. Even if the oil sands were shut down entirely, Gulf Coast refineries would merely use the similarly heavy oil from Venezuela, also shipped via tankers.

Thus the issue is not whether the oil will flow but how much Americans will benefit. A rule of thumb is that for every dollar of imported foreign oil, North America receives about 10 cents of the economic benefit. The Venezuelans, Saudis and others get the rest. The benefit from oil produced in North America is roughly 80-90 cents of each $1. This includes the cost of producing and transporting the oil, and the ancillary jobs and sales that flow from it. The Keystone XL has also reserved space for about 250,000 barrels a day of oil produced in the U.S., which means a new and environmentally safer outlet for oil from the booming Bakken fields of North Dakota.

All of this was known two years ago, but Mr. Obama opposed the project in 2011 to appease the Sierra Club and his other green financial donors while running for re-election. The pipeline's builder,TransCanada, applied again with a new route, and now the President faces another choice.

His labor supporters favor the pipeline, which will provide thousands of union jobs. His green supporters don't much care about jobs because they are already rich. They are also impervious to evidence like that in the State Department report because global warming is their religion.

"Mother Nature filed her comments last year—the hottest year in American history; the top climate scientists in the U.S. have already chimed in," said Bill McKibben in reaction to the report. He's the leader of the anti-Keystone forces who was arrested last month after chaining himself to the White House gate.

The opponents' goal is to shut down all fossil-fuel production, one step at a time. They're on the way to destroying the U.S. coal industry, and the Sierra Club has made shale-gas drilling its next political target. They want the world economy to run on windmills and solar panels. And these are the folks who denounce Republicans for ignoring science.

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry need to think about the impact of rejection on U.S.-Canada relations. One of the better economic stories of the last 50 years has been the integration of the North American economy, including the free flow of goods, investment and to some extent people. Rejection of the pipeline would be an insult to Canada and a step back from that integration.

The larger issue is whether the U.S. wants to continue to be considered a serious economic nation with rising living standards and a modern energy supply. If Mr. Obama turns down Keystone XL, the Chinese will be laughing at us as they buy Canadian oil and build their economic power, while America adapts to the Sierra Club's preferred future of the world as Walden Pond.

NYT urges climate alarmists to 'go crazy' if Obama approves Keystone

The Otter Way of Stopping

A futile and stupid--not to mention crazy and lawless--plan to "save the planet."

By JAMES TARANTO

WSJ.COM 3/11/13:  The Obama administration continues to drag its feet on approving the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport crude oil from Canada through the American Great Plains to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. Environmentalists oppose the pipeline because they hate oil, which they claim causes "climate change."

Reuters

Following Friedman's advice

The New York Times editorial page demands that President Obama reject the pipeline "for one overriding reason: A president who has repeatedly identified climate change as one of humanity's most pressing dangers cannot in good conscience approve a project that--even by the State Department's most cautious calculations--can only add to the problem."

It's not as if the Canadians lack other options. If the administration nixes the project, they'll extract the oil and ship it on tankers to Asia. The Times says that would still be preferable because it would "slow down plans" to expand production and "force the construction of new pipelines through Canada itself," which in turn would "require Canadians to play a larger role in deciding whether a massive expansion of tar sands development is prudent." It sounds to us as if the Canadians have already made their call on that one.

In the last paragraph of the editorial--yes, we read it all the way through; this job has its hardships--the Times makes one hell of a concession: "In itself, the Keystone pipeline will not push the world into a climate apocalypse." So why all the fuss, eh? It seems the Times has borrowed its governing philosophy from Otter, a character in the classic political comedy "Animal House": "I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part!"

Reuters

Following Friedman's advice

Futile and stupid aren't enough for Times columnist Thomas Friedman. He agrees with his editors that Obama ought to put the kibosh on Keystone, but he doubts the president will. "So I hope that Bill McKibben"--an environmental extremist--"and his 350.org coalition go crazy."

By "crazy," he means lawless: "I'm talking chain-themselves-to-the-White-House-fence-stop-traffic-at-the-Capitol kind of crazy, because I think if we all make enough noise about this, we might be able to trade a lousy Keystone pipeline for some really good systemic responses to climate change. . . . So cue up the protests, and pay no attention to people counseling rational and mature behavior."

Remember when the Times and some of its columnists were crusading to silence "uncivil" language by their political adversaries and media rivals? By contrast, directly urging unlawful activity is acceptable on the pages of the Times if it furthers a leftist agenda.

...

Krugman proposes to avoid a debt crisis by going deeper into debt in the hope that will produce full employment and make the debt sustainable. It sounds crazy to us. A saner way of creating some jobs would be to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

Obama Begins Energy, Environment Two-Step

By Gerald F. Seib

Associated Press

A photo from 2012 shows miles of pipe ready to become part of the Keystone Pipeline near Ripley, Okla.

WSJ.COM 6/26/13: President Barack Obama takes the most important environmental initiative of his presidency Tuesday when he delivers a speech announcing a series of measures he’ll take to combat global warming.

But that speech is only the first part of what figures to be an environmental and energy two-step dance Mr. Obama will attempt this year. The politics of that maneuver are tricky, and fascinating, for a president trying be both an environmentalist and a leader pulling America down the path toward energy independence.

In the first step on global warming, Mr. Obama is expected to announce steps to lower emissions of gases that are believed to contribute to climate change. They will include plans to promote cleaner energy and energy efficiency—and, most importantly and controversially, regulations to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from not only new power plants but from existing plants as well.

Those could prove expensive steps, and the power industry figures to fight them. But liberals, who are grousing about some aspects of Obama policy, will cheer this one.

The politics gets more complicated when Mr. Obama makes his next big energy decision, on whether to approve construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to carry tar-sands oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Environmentalists despise that idea, both because they think it will only further addiction to burning fossil fuels and because they consider tar-sands oil a particularly dirty kind of energy.

But for Mr. Obama, it appears that approval of Keystone would be an overall political winner despite the objections of environmentalists in his base. The other constituencies most upset by a big global-warming program would cheer Keystone’s approval.

More important, a Pew Research Center survey taken this spring showed the Keystone pipeline approval would be broadly popular across voting groups. Among all Americans, 66% approved construction of the pipeline, while just 23% opposed it. The approval ratings ranged from 82% among Republicans to 54% among Democrats, and 60% among those under the age of 30 to 74% among those 65 and older. Even among liberals, a healthy 42% said they would approve, while 48% were opposed.

Also in the WSJ today:

President Details Sweeping Climate Policies

By KEITH JOHNSON, TOM FOWLER and CASSANDRA SWEET

 

WSJ.COM 6/26/13: A far-reaching plan to fight climate change detailed by President Barack Obama on Tuesday would profoundly reshape the way the U.S. produces and consumes electricity, though the resistance it is sure to encounter promises to sow uncertainty for an industry already buffeted by shifting rules and economics.

As part of a much-anticipated speech at Georgetown University, in which the president laid out the first-ever federal effort to rein in greenhouse-gas emissions from the power sector, Mr. Obama also said he would approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline later this year if it didn't "significantly" increase net greenhouse-gas emissions. Mr. Obama's conditional remark was meant, in part, to blunt criticism that approving an oil pipeline would be at odds with his climate policy.

His speech stirred strong reactions from business leaders: Manufacturers raised fears the plan would raise electricity prices and cut competitiveness, while the plan drew support from nuclear and other clean-energy companies that stand to benefit if greenhouse-gas emissions are restricted.

Mr. Obama's push, which doesn't require congressional approval, faces years of political and legal challenges. If put into place, planned curbs could accelerate the demise of coal, the backbone of power generation since the days of Thomas Edison. New regulations could make natural gas and nuclear power more attractive, since they emit less carbon dioxide than coal-fired power plants, and they could greatly boost renewable energy, such as wind and solar power, and speed the adoption of energy-efficiency measures.

A push to cut back existing coal-fired generation capacity could also lead to a supply crunch if a recovering U.S. economy spurs greater demand for power, while possibly raising electricity rates for consumers, industry analysts said.

Mr. Obama on Tuesday offered his most aggressive attack on opponents of measures to curb carbon pollution. "We don't have time for a meeting of the flat-earth society," he said, outlining a suite of steps the administration can take without the need for legislation that would begin to meet Mr. Obama's goal of curbing greenhouse-gas emissions 17% from 2005 levels by 2020.

Related

• President's Plan
• GOP Levels Swift Criticism
• Full text of Obama's remarks
• Utilities React Cautiously
• Obama Seeks Cash for Expected Clash
• Pipeline Comments Send Mixed Messages

The centerpiece is the first-ever federal effort to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from existing power plants, the source of about one-third of such emissions in the U.S.

Mr. Obama's plan includes other measures meant to reduce emissions, including federal loan guarantees for cleaner fossil-fuel energy projects; new fuel-economy standards for heavy trucks; and greater cooperation between the U.S. and major economies including China, India and Brazil.

The president's speech drew strong criticism from Republicans. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said the plan is "tantamount to declaring a war on jobs. It's tantamount to kicking the ladder out from beneath the feet of many Americans struggling in today's economy."

Energy experts said the new regulations could spur more use of natural gas, which emits about half the carbon dioxide of coal.

Investors saw the plan as a boon to the natural-gas industry, sending up shares in firms such as Devon Energy Corp., SandRidge Energy Inc., and EOG Resources Inc. by about 2%.

President Obama says he will direct the EPA to create carbon standards for power plants and stresses that he will work with anyone to fight climate change, but has no patience for those who ignore it, in a speech at Georgetown University on Tuesday.

Washington Wire

Gerald F. Seib: President Obama takes his most important environmental initiative yet when he announces measures to combat global warming. But the politics of that maneuver are tricky for a president trying to be both an environmentalist and leader taking America towards energy independence. Read More

Utilities heavily invested in clean energy, including NextEra Energy Inc. and Public Service Enterprise Group Inc., also welcomed the plan, though they said they preferred legislation.

Some U.S. utilities that burn coal to generate electricity reacted with caution. "The devil is in the details," said Brad Watson, a spokesman for Luminant, a large power-plant operator in Texas that burns coal. "Overall, we want to see a policy that's broad and that would cover all sectors, not just the power sector and especially not just coal generators."

American Electric Power Inc., a Columbus, Ohio-based owner of utilities, expressed cautious optimism about the rules, saying it hopes the administration will take a "balanced approach" that will include flexibility for power-plant operators.

Vic Svec, a senior vice president of St. Louis based Peabody Energy Corp., the nation's biggest coal producer, said any reduction in coal generation would hurt Americans "who would feel the same pain at the plug that we all feel at the pump."

[CO2 is NOT pollution]

The coal-mining industry is already reeling from the country's glut of cheap natural gas. Any pain could spill over into the bottom lines of railroads that have turned coal-hauling into a lucrative business.

Energy analysts say the new rules, combined with environmental standards now being implemented, could push about one-third of the U.S. coal-fired fleet into retirement. Much of that shortfall could be made up from other sources, because electricity demand is nearly flat. But it could also expose industries and consumers to more volatile prices, one reason power companies have resisted relying too heavily on gas for power generation in the past.

"Natural gas has broken more hearts than any movie star. Coal is unsexy, but it's there for you," said Kevin Book, managing director at Clearview Energy Partners LLC in Washington.

Some big industrial users expressed concern that higher or more volatile power prices could undermine their competitiveness. "We compete globally against countries, including China, where the industry is often state-owned, controlled, and subsidized, including for electricity costs," said Thomas Gibson, president and CEO of the American Iron and Steel Institute.

Canada's oil industry and government welcomed Mr. Obama's statement about the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline. Canadian Minister of Natural Resources Joe Oliver told reporters that both the Canadian government and the U.S. State Department, which heads Washington's regulatory process on Keystone, believe the controversial pipeline connecting Alberta's oil sands to the U.S. Gulf coast will not "significantly exacerbate" pollution. The CEO of Keystone operator TransCanada Corp., Russ Girling, said he was "pleased" with the president's latest remarks.

The renewed emphasis on climate change reopens Mr. Obama to Republican allegations that he is waging a "war on coal," which could be a factor in the 2014 elections in states with large coal industries. The plan received a distinctly chilly reception from coal companies and politicians in coal country.

Mr. Obama's plan also could rejuvenate an environmentalist base that had become disillusioned in the wake of Washington gridlock. "This is the change we have been waiting for on climate. Today, President Obama has shown he is keeping his word to future generations," said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club.

The measures will take years to be put in place, and may not be finished by the end of Mr. Obama's second term. Industry groups, which have been bracing for increased regulation for several years, have already signaled their intention to fight in the courts.

"The unknowns here are still much bigger than the knowns," said Michael Levi, an energy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. "We know there will be regulations, but we don't know how aggressive or flexible they'll be."

The administration is finalizing tougher emission standards for new power plants, which must be in place before it can set rules for existing power plants. Mr. Obama said he would direct the EPA to "put an end to the bottomless dumping of carbon pollution from power plants."

WSJ: "In Exxon War, Bamboozled by Greenies" & "The Tombstone Pipeline"

In Exxon War, Bamboozled by Greenies

Journalists discover (and misrepresent) what the oil giant has been trying to tell them for years.

By HOLMAN JENKINS, JR.

Nov. 6, 2015 6:28 p.m. ET        THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

15 COMMENTS

ENLARGE

The Exxon Mobil refinery in Baytown, Texas.PHOTO: JESSICA RINALDI/REUTERS

Scurry on board the Exxon prosecution express. Lest they be left behind and called “deniers,” Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley,the attorney general of New York and Al Gorethis week all demanded criminal investigation of Exxon Mobil as a result of recent media “exposés.”

Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire on Thursday agreed, saying, “There’s a lot of evidence that they misled people.”

Not one of these worthies likely examined the evidence, which tells a story quite different from the claim that Exxon somehow concealed its understanding of the climate debate. But the hurdle rate for “investigative” journalism has apparently become low. The allegedly damning documents that the Los Angeles Times and the website Inside Climate News (ICN) claim to have unearthed were published by Exxon itself, in peer-reviewed journals, on its website, and in archives created by Exxon for public use.

Opinion Journal Video

Business World Columnist Holman Jenkins Jr.on President Obama’s announcement to reject TransCanada’s application to build the Keystone XL Pipeline. Photo credit: Associated Press.

Technically, the reporters wallow in the equivocation fallacy. Uncertainty about whether X=2 is not the same as uncertainty about whether 2+2=4. Acknowledging and even studying man’s impact on the climate, as Exxon has done and continues to do, is not tantamount to endorsing a green policy agenda of highly questionable value.

And that’s the real problem. Read closely and the accusation isn’t really that Exxon misled the public by emphasizing the uncertainties of climate science, which are real. It’s that Exxon refused to sign up for a vision of climate doom that would justify large and immediate costs to reduce fossil fuel use.

This fantasy is summed up in the ICN series by Penn State climatologist Michael Mann,who is quoted as saying, “All it would’ve taken is for one prominent fossil fuel CEO to know this was about more than just shareholder profits.”

But wait, hasn’t this experiment been run? In the early 2000s, BP CEO John Brownebegan sounding a climate alarm. Ron Oxburgh, the chairman of Shell, gave a speech warning of planetary doom. In 2007, Alcoa, GE, Duke Energy, Ford, DuPont and others endorsed a U.S. cap-and-trade bill. All this failed to move the ball in two successive congresses, though, because Senate Democrats (the second time joined by President Obama) didn’t want to be blamed for jacking up gasoline prices.

The same experiment has also been run globally. Out of 196 countries, 196 have concluded that there is no way, with current technology, to take a big enough whack out of carbon-dioxide emissions at a cost their societies would be prepared to bear.

Even Mr. Obama’s decision on Friday to nix the Keystone XL pipeline came at a time of low gas prices when he will never face voters again, and in full knowledge that his decision won’t impede Canada’s development of its oil sands.

The narrative of Exxon’s supposedly criminal deceit may be loopy, but save your real contempt for the climate lawyers now rubbing their hands over a Big Tobacco-style lawsuit. In effect, their cynical reasoning is that Exxon can be punished for failing to conceal its awareness of the climate debate.

But why stop at Exxon? President Obama is aware of the threat of climate change—he talks about it all the time—yet has presided over an expansion of oil and gas leasing. Vice President Al Gore endlessly harped on climate change—yet when confronted with a modest uptick in gasoline prices during his presidential run, insisted that President Clinton open the strategic reserve to keep gas prices low.

Maybe the tobacco analogy is apt after all. Recall that the result of government lawsuits wasn’t to ban tobacco use but to make government (and organized crime) the main beneficiary of tobacco revenues. The U.S. government controls 31% of America’s mineral rights, and has 42,000 drilling leases in effect covering 80 million acres. Federal lands produce 41% of America’s coal output. Elsewhere, governments control 100% of mineral rights. Wherever it operates these days, Exxon is mainly an agent for governments determined to realize oil revenues regardless of any climate fears.

But the big lie here is that any Exxon spectacle would be aimed at advancing the cause of climate policy anyway. Especially sad is the decision by Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund to sign a group letter calling for a criminal inquiry, though he mealy-mouthed his participation by saying “We don’t have all the facts. We’re not prejudging what happened.”

Mr. Krupp was last seen blaming the “shrillness that has permeated our advocacy” for the Senate defeats, and calling for a “more reasoned” and “calmer discussion” that is diametrically the opposite of the Exxon witch trial now being whipped up.

At least until this week, Mr. Krupp was an outlier, devoting himself to the coalition-building that is indispensable for real policy progress (and Exxon for the past six years has been a public supporter of a carbon tax). But Mr. Krupp’s fellow climate campaigners clearly have other priorities.

The Tombstone Pipeline

Obama kills thousands of jobs for climate-change symbolism.

Nov. 6, 2015 6:56 p.m. ET

132 COMMENTS

President Obama personally killed the Keystone XL pipeline on Friday, dismissing the project as a mere “symbol” that “has occupied what I, frankly, consider an overinflated role in our political discourse.” The irony is that the pipeline’s benefits would be tangible, while the symbolism and overinflation are entirely political.

A President more invested in the real economy would have long ago welcomed Keystone’s contribution to North American energy development. But on Friday Mr. Obama emerged, seven years into both his Presidency and multiple State Department reviews of the pipeline, to declare that Keystone is not in the national interest of the United States.

This position is—to borrow his phrase—well outside the bipartisan political center. Mr. Obama would have been more honest if he’d admitted that he is bowing to the interests of the green-left fringe and the Democratic donors who oppose all forms of carbon energy.

A broad Congressional majority voted to approve Keystone this year, including nine Democrats in the Senate and 28 in the House, falling only a few votes short of a veto override. Business, consumers, labor unions and America’s No. 1 trading partner Canada also wanted to connect Alberta’s oil sands to Gulf Coast refineries, which would create thousands of jobs and strengthen energy security.

Opinon Journal Video

Business World Columnist Holman Jenkins Jr.on President Obama’s announcement to reject TransCanada’s application to build the Keystone XL Pipeline. Photo credit: Associated Press.

Even as he killed Keystone, Mr. Obama urged Congress to “pass a serious infrastructure plan.” But what are pipelines if not the definition of infrastructure—and this one shovel-ready besides, at no cost to taxpayers? Even Mr. Obama conceded that Keystone is not “the express lane to climate disaster,” and the State Department determined the pipeline would reduce CO2 emissions by displacing oil transport via truck and rail. Then why reject it?

To promote his climate-change ambitions, by Mr. Obama’s own admission. Mr. Obama said in his statement Friday that the U.S. “is now a global leader” on climate change “and frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership.” So he will now dump Keystone’s corpse at the Paris global-warming summit in the coming weeks and demand that other countries make their own ritual sacrifices.

Mr. Obama suggested that “other big emitters like China” will be impressed. Yet only this week the Chinese revealed that their coal use is 17% higher than previously thought. China is such a heavy carbon user that this 17% wedge alone amounts to 70% of all U.S. coal emissions. If this correction in any way revises Mr. Obama’s climate pact with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he didn’t mention it.

The larger and more dangerous symbolism is what Mr. Obama’s refusal reveals about today’s Democratic Party. Liberals used to favor a price on carbon, which would be damaging enough for economic growth. Now they believe fossil fuels must remain underground forever and favor any obstruction against their development. Hillary Clinton now embraces this same philosophy.

Maybe Keystone can be revived in the next Administration, assuming a Republican wins the Presidency and the TransCanada company hasn’t written off America as too politically risky. For now, workers and the economy will have to suffer for Mr. Obama’s green illusions.