WASHINGTON – Once again the six-year battle over Canada’s controversial Keystone XL pipeline has turned into a political football in the United States.
This time the gridiron has shifted to Louisiana where two senate candidates are locked in a tight runoff race scheduled for Dec. 6.
Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu is in a close contest with Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy to keep her seat for a fourth term. Both candidates have made Keystone a pivotal issue as they rush to claim credit for any jobs and economic opportunity the pipeline might create if it is ever approved.
Cassidy has run ads attacking Landrieu for not forcing a vote in the senate to approve the pipeline while she has been chair of the senate energy committee. Meanwhile, he notes, the House of Representatives has voted eight times for Keystone’s approval.
So this week Landrieu, battling for her political life, brought her campaign to the senate floor where she successfully lobbied fellow Democrats to hold a vote on Keystone. Debate is scheduled to begin Tuesday and the vote could be held the same day.
“I think that one of the most important issues that we can get done … is the directive to build the Keystone pipeline,” she told reporters. “This project has cleared every environmental hurdle and has met the complete environmental review.”
She added that American energy independence is “impossible without the Keystone pipeline.”
Not to be outdone, Cassidy quickly persuaded the House to hold yet another vote over Keystone XL which is scheduled for Friday.
Meanwhile, White House spokesman Josh Earnest, traveling with Barack Obama in Myanmar (Burma), told reporters the U.S. president, who will make the final decision on Keystone, regrets the interference of both houses of congress.
Landrieu denied charges that her senate position was nothing more than a political ploy. The public “cannot accept, and they should not have to accept gridlock, game playing and raw politics on the great floor of this United States Senate,” she said on the senate floor Thursday.
Cassidy told Fox News, “I have to smile when Sen. Landrieu says politics are not involved.”
Enough Democrats from energy states support the pipeline for Keystone XL to win approval in the senate. But it is unlikely Obama will sign a bill should one reach his desk.
His public statements on Keystone trend towards the negative. He insists that the pipeline’s impact on climate change is the central issue and not its economic impact. He often cites a state department report noting Keystone will create only 35 permanent jobs. He recently said that the U.S. doesn’t need the oilsands oil that Keystone will transport to Gulf Coast refineries.
The report, however, also estimates the pipeline will “support” (as opposed to create) up to 42,100 jobs in construction and spinoffs over a two-year period. But the so-called support jobs, which number about 26,000, include jobs that already exist such as hotel clerks and food suppliers.
The congressional Keystone debates come a day after the joint U.S.-China announcement of new post-2020 greenhouse gas emission targets and is part of Obama’s clean energy policy. In light of this, approval of Keystone could be viewed as a policy conflict particularly since Obama is attempting to reduce U.S. fossil fuel consumption by an amount equal to or greater than the annual oilsands production.
Democrat Rep. Xavier Becerra, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said Thursday he was against the House bill claiming it was “sprung on” lawmakers and absolves Keystone of liability for oil spills under the Endangered Species Act and payment into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.
“So the process was flawed to begin with,” he told reporters. “There is no guarantee that Americans will benefit one drop from the oil.”
The pipeline, which is a project of TransCanada Pipelines, is reviled by environmentalists and clean energy supporters throughout the U.S. who claim that it will lead to the expansion of “dirty” oilsands projects in Alberta.
Obama has said he will wait until the completion of court proceedings in Nebraska, which challenge the state’s approval of the location of the pipeline, before making his decision on Keystone.
