WASHINGTON – After more than five years of often inflamed debate, U.S. President Barack Obama says he will decide on the fate of the troubled Keystone XL pipeline “one way or another in a couple of months.”
Obama announced the timeline Monday at a meeting of the National Governors Association.
The contentious pipeline, which has become target of major environmental groups who serve it up as the symbol of climate change, will transport oilsands bitumen from Alberta and heavy oil from South Dakota to Texas Gulf Coast refineries.
The announcement indicates that Obama will not be distracted by a Nebraska court decision earlier this month that struck down a state law that gave the governor sole discretion to approve the pipeline’s route through Nebraska.
Nebraska governor Dave Heineman has appealed the decision, but the process could take up to a year. Many ranchers have refused to allow the pipeline to go through their land and have vowed to fight expropriation all the way to the Nevada Supreme Court.
TransCanada Corp., which owns the pipeline project, claims its route still has state approval despite the court ruling. Lawyers for the landowners who launched the lawsuit disagree.
Meanwhile, in Washington two lawmakers Tuesday asked the General Accounting Office to investigate potential conflicts of interest between Environmental Resources Management, which produced the Keystone XL final environment assessment report for the U.S. state department, and TransCanada.
The state department has already said that it found no conflicts of interest regarding ERM.
Illinois Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat, said that regardless of potential conflicts “it is clear that the Keystone XL pipeline is not in our national interest.”
“In order to prevent catastrophic climate change, 80 per cent of global reserves have to stay below ground,” she said at a press conference. “If we need to prevent the burning of 80 per cent of carbon reserves we should start by rejecting Keystone XL.”
She then made the sweeping statement that continued expansion of the oilsands would lead to runaway climate change.
She ignored, however, several questions about reducing U.S. consumption of fossil fuels as the only real anecdote to climate change.
