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State Department Inspector General weighs in: Says make pipeline permit review more rigorous and free of appearance of conflict of interest

2012-02-09T20:59:09Z

Liz Barratt-Brown, Senior Attorney, Washington, DC

“The appearance of this . . . needs to be cleaner”

(unnamed State Department official in IG report)

In a report sent to Congressional offices today, the State Department Inspector General found that the environmental review of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline had fallen short of providing an independent and objective review that Americans deserve.

The IG investigation was initiated before the President and State Department announced they would take more time to review the impacts of the pipeline, and, in particular, look at alternative routes to cutting through the Ogallala aquifer, one of our nation’s most important water sources. But in January, the permit was denied after Republicans in Congress insisted on attaching a rider to the payroll tax extension that forced the President to make a decision in sixty days. The President made it clear that if the forcing language was included in the bill, he would have no choice but to deny the permit since there was inadequate time to complete the review and to find and evaluate an alternative route.

At the heart of the controversy that initially sparked the IG investigation was the use of a “third party” contractor, Cardno Entrix, to conduct the environmental review. In a procedure that many would liken to the fox guarding the chicken coop, the applicant for a project, in this case, TransCanada, presented the reviewing agency with its choices for contracting out the review. The IG report explained that that practice has evolved because the applicant pays for the contractor and because this allows reviews to be processed more quickly.

But there is obviously a downside to such active engagement of the applicant in the review. At a minimum, it muddies the water regarding who is in charge of the contractor, the applicant or the State Department (it is still not clear who the contractor was contracted with – more on this later). And the water is further muddied when you have a reviewing agency, like the State Department, which has little experience in implementing environmental reviews under the National Environmental Protection Act, conducting the review. It makes it more likely that the review will be untowardly influenced by the contractor, which is in effect working for the applicant.

These were the very problems identified by the IG. First, they found that while the selection of the contractor followed legal guidelines, it led to an appearance of conflict of interest. The IG report quotes a State Department official who said that they had no control over who the applicant sent a proposal to and said further that because the applicant is “paying the bill”, the applicant was allowed to review the responses to proposals and to forward their top three choices to the Department. The report goes on to find that two of the three proposals failed to meet minimum requirements, making Entrix the sole remaining choice (why the applicant wasn’t required to have those proposals fixed or put forward new ones is a mystery to me). The IG report concluded: “Any potential appearance of improper influence can lead the American public to question the Department's independence and objectivity. Therefore, the Department should modify its third-party contracting process to reduce the appearance of improper influence." (p. 13)

Second, the IG found that there was a lack of technical depth on the part of the State Department. They found that the Department had to rely heavily on Entrix to address both substantive and procedural issues, thereby further compromising the process. The IG report stated: "The Department’s limited technical resources, expertise, and experience impacted the implementation of the NEPA process. The Department had to rely more on outside parties, such as its third-party contractor and other Federal agencies with expertise, to address issues related to alternatives and mitigation, pipeline safety, and environmental risks throughout the EIS process. As a result, OIG believes the EIS and related processes were less effective, thereby delaying the decision for approval or denial of the Keystone application.” (p. 21)

Thirdly, the IG found that the State Department had failed to certify that there were no conflicts of interest between the contactor, Entrix, and TransCanada and had failed to look beyond statements made by Entrix to validate whether they were true. The regulations the State Department follows require that conflicts of interest be identified and investigated. The IG report stated: “It is the applicant’s responsibility to review carefully all organizational conflict of interest materials to determine whether a bidder, including any subcontractors, is capable of impartially performing the environmental services required under the third-party contract…. However, the Department did not request, and TransCanada did not provide, the organizational conflict of interest certification required by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Handbook, nor did the Department conduct any independent inquiry into the information contained in the organizational conflict of interest statement.” (p. 24)

Finally, the IG report found that the State Department had failed to respond to two issues, stating that this was again likely due to lack of technical expertise. First, they failed to respond to what I suspect were some rather sharp questions put forward by DOE about whether the pipeline would supply could be exported out of the U.S. and would reduce U.S. exposure to oil price and political volatility. Second, they failed to review alternatives to the pipeline route put forward by TransCanada. This lack of consideration of alternatives became a major reason that the pipeline permit was ultimately denied. The IG report stated: “Although the Department took actions that generally addressed and incorporated the views and concerns raised by other Federal agencies in the final EIS, some comments from the Department of Energy’s July 2010 letter on the draft EIS were omitted from the appendix in the final EIS. Therefore, the Department did not provide a written response to all of the comments contained in the July 2010 letter. In addition, some concerns provided by the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency were not completely incorporated. In particular, these agencies commented on the lack of alternative routes and the rationale the Department had used to exclude those routes from further evaluation in the EIS.” (p. 19)

One aspect of the IG report baffles me and that is its treatment of the FOIA process. As an organization that has three major FOIA requests pending (some pending since March of last year), I found it disturbing that the response rates of the Department were found to be within a reasonable range. This is likely because they used one case as the outside marker that had gone on for longer than 2,000 days, or in other words, over five years. This lack of responsiveness to FOIA requests deprives the public access to an open and transparent government generally. In this case, it has compounded the appearance of conflict of interest and unduly cozy relationships with the pipeline company and with its contractor, Entrix. Here is what the IG report said: “These cases are within the Department’s average complex case processing time for 2010, which is 284 days. In 2010, the fastest processed complex case was 21 days, and the longest case had been pending 2,162 days. These 18 cases are in various stages of processing, including releasing the first segment to the requestor, awaiting release to the requestor pending review, and tasking the request to various bureaus and offices for records.” (p. 38) We hope that the State Department will hurry up and respond to our and others’ requests.

In summary and not surprisingly, The IG report made three major recommendations.

1- The Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs at the State Department (OES), working with Legal Advisors office, should redesign the process for selecting third- party contractors, such as Entrix, by maximizing the Department’s control over each step of the process and minimizing the control of the applicant;

2- OES should have a full time NEPA expert on staff.

3- OES, working with the Legal Advisors office, should redesign process for selecting and using third-party contractors to improve Department’s organizational conflicts of interest screening process.

What is clear from all this is that, while the State Department has been cleared of legal wrongdoing, there are serious questions that remain about the “independence and objectivity” (as stated by the IG) of the environmental review. Just today, Friends of the Earth, the organization that has led the call for an investigation into the State Department review, reported that the Department had denied their request for a copy of the contract between Entrix and either TransCanada or the State Department. Given that the Congressional offices requesting the review also asked for the contract, it is amazing to me that they are refusing to release it. It only makes you wonder, what are they hiding?

The larger point is that there were unseemly practices, that, while legal, undermined the review process. If TransCanada were to re-apply, the State Department has made it clear they would have to go through the review process again. And that is a good thing, in light of this report and the concerns we expressed in our letter to the IG office.

But right now, Republicans on Capitol Hill are busy trying to attach riders to any bill that moves that would force approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Attaching a rider forcing approval of the pipeline would make a mockery of a fair and “cleaner” review process for any pipeline, and certainly for one as massive as the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

It's all about the framing: How polls and the media misrepresent the Keystone XL [tar sands][oil] pipeline

2012-02-04T17:09:18Z

Liz Barratt-Brown, Senior Attorney, Washington, DC

First of all, you won’t find tar sands mentioned in any of the polling. And in most polls, you won’t even find oil. It’s just the Keystone XL pipeline, no context, no mention of what it will carry, and certainly no mention of the environmental risks of building a massive pipeline to carry toxic tar sands sludge through the heartland of America to the gulf of Mexico, where it would be exported out of the U.S.

The question asked by two recent polls, one by Rasmussen and the other by the National Journal, was more or less, “Do you support or oppose building the Keystone XL pipeline?” And the Rasmussen poll also asks if job creation is more important than protecting the environment, posing these two goals as oppositional.

Most Americans don't see it that way. In our opinion research and other opinion research, such as the major new survey in the West, Americans overwhelmingly believe that a strong economy and the environment can go hand in hand. And they show a real concern for protecting resources, such as our water supply, from degradation. But both the Rasmussen and the National Journal polls show a majority of Americans in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline.

But are they really?

What if the pollsters changed the question to more accurately represent the actual project and inserted “tar sands oil pipeline”? What if they described to the public that the pipeline would jeopardize one of America’s most important freshwater aquifers, the Ogallala? What if they were told that a first pipeline just like the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and built by the same foreign company, TransCanada, had had over 12 spills in the U.S. (30 if you count Canada) in just its first year of operation? What if they were told that the oil is not really oil but a toxic sludge that is largely strip mined from under the Boreal forest in Canada and has to be diluted with toxic chemicals and pushed through pipelines at high temperature and pressure in pipelines only regulated to carry conventional oil? And what if the public were given the opportunity to choose a tar sands oil pipeline or increasing our reliance on homegrown renewable energy?

No poll has set this tar sands pipeline in any kind of context. Instead most of the questions are preceded or followed by generic questions about jobs and the economy or with questions about whether the country is going in the right direction.

So, without context, what do you think most Americans would first think of when asked about a pipeline?

Jobs and the economy.

And that is just the framing they have also been hearing again and again from the media.

Take jobs as an example. Job creation has been the major argument put forward by pipeline proponents. Even though TransCanada is on record admitting that there would in fact be no more than 6,500 jobs over two years and only hundreds of permanent jobs, that has not stopped the company, the American Petroleum Institute, Republicans on the Hill and the Republican Presidential candidates from saying the pipeline would create hundreds of thousands of jobs and putting it forward as a national jobs plan rather than the single construction project that it is. The jobs estimates have been so wild that Stephen Colbert couldn’t resist poking fun at the million jobs pipeline.

Lots of Americans are suffering right now and jobs creation must be a top priority but at what price and who benefits? The one independent study that has been done on the jobs issue, by Cornell Global Labor Institute, found that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would be a jobs killer because it would suppress clean energy jobs and because inevitable spills would cost jobs in other sectors of the economy. When all of the risk is being underwritten by American families and the major beneficiaries are the major oil companies, you have to ask is this good for our economy in the long run? Roger Toussaint of the Transit Workers of America said it best when he said, “We want jobs but not as gravediggers for the planet”.

So let’s dig in a bit regarding what the public has been hearing.

Media Matters, a nonprofit organization that tracks the media, released a survey that analyzed coverage of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline from August 1 to December 31, 2011. They found that the media overwhelmingly framed the pipeline as a jobs issue. In 33% of the broadcast coverage, the highly inflated jobs numbers were repeated verbatim. In none of this coverage was any criticism of those figures mentioned. It was not much better for cable news. In 45% of the coverage, the figures were repeated verbatim. And only 11% of the coverage mentioned any criticism. Fox News repeated the jobs numbers more than all the other TV networks combined. Print news was not much better, with 29% repeating the jobs figures verbatim and only 5% mentioning any criticism.

It also seems to matter who you interview.

Here is a figure that really made me shake my head –79% of the time, broadcast news reporting on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline interviewed a pipeline proponent. Only 7% of the time did they interview a tar sands pipeline opponent. Cable news was not much better: 59% of the coverage featured proponents and only 16% featured opponents. Print news did slightly better with 45% featuring proponents and 31% featuring opponents.

And this was over the period of time when there were 1250 peaceful protesters arrested in front of the White House and then a few months later when nearly 15,000 people gathered and encircled the White House opposing the pipeline. It was during the months when an Inspector General investigation was launched into the State Department mishandling of the environmental review. And it covered the period when the President declared that more environmental studies needed to be conducted to understand the risks of the pipeline to the American public and find a new route that avoided the sensitive Ogallala and Sandhills regions of Nebraska.

Media Matters collected data on how jobs and energy security mentions compared to environmental mentions. In broadcast, cable, and print respectively, jobs were mentioned 67%, 77%, and 68% of the time. Energy security was mentioned 22%, 28%, and 54% respectively. And environment was mentioned 17%, 34%, and 65%. Coverage of the State Department mishandling of the review process was scarcely mentioned at all.

What’s more is that since Media Matters did their survey, the rhetoric around the pipeline has become even more extreme and even venues like the New York Times, which has been one of the exceptions in providing fair coverage of the pipeline, are running political stories about the pipeline that don’t include any environmental perspective.

So it is not surprising that when Americans are polled by Rasmussen and the National Journal, where they throw out a few quick questions or maybe just one question on the pipeline, we’re getting higher than expected levels of support. Given the Media Matters survey, I am frankly surprised the numbers aren’t worse.

I went to google Speaker Boehner’s statements on Keystone XL and I found that “Keystone” is actually one of the words most frequently associated with the Speaker (after crying, birthday song, and payroll taxes). That’s because he and the Republicans in Congress have taken up the pipeline as a holy crucible. The reality is that the “Keystone Energy Project” – as he likes to describe it (notice we lose even the mention of pipeline) – is the top bidding of the oil industry. After defeating the climate legislation on the Hill, there has been no higher priority. And in addition to the lopsided media coverage, Americans have also been deluged with ads about the benefits of the pipeline.

Fortunately, most Americans have a heavy dose of skepticism when it comes to the oil industry. So maybe, just maybe, when people hear the pollsters’ question, they hesitate for a moment and wonder what is all this pipeline fuss really about.

So what can we conclude? I’d wager that if you ask people if they think building a new pipeline will create jobs, they will inevitably say yes. But if you were to provide context and ask them if they wanted to risk their drinking water, greater energy self-reliance, and providing a future for our kids that does not trade off our climate and drinking water to line the pockets of the multi-national oil companies, I suspect they’d say no.

There desperately needs to be an improvement in both poll taking and in media coverage so that there can be a fair and balanced debate about this tar sands mega pipeline. So far, the debate has been anything but balanced and that does the American public a great disservice.

Addendum: On February 6, Politico reported that a Hart poll showed that once independents better understand the pro and con arguments for the tar sands pipeline, they agree with the President's decision to delay the pipeline by a margin of 47% to 36% (Democrats are already on side in strong margins). They are particularly concerned that risks to water supplies from pipeline spills, especially over the heartland's Ogallala aquifer, be addressed. The poll was conducted in late January in Colorado, Michigan, Iowa, and Ohio.

Keystone XL rejected: Tar sands pipeline once thought "too big to fail" has fallen

2012-01-18T21:29:48Z

Liz Barratt-Brown, Senior Attorney, Washington, DC

The great pipeline showdown has backfired on the Republican leadership, just as we predicted it would back in December when they forced a 60-day time-frame for approving or rejecting the pipeline on the President during the tax extension negotiations. The President made it clear then, through Administration sources, that he would have no choice but to reject it. And that is just what he did today.

The President has put his agreement with the American people first. In delaying a decision on the pipeline in December, he made it clear that he would not put the American public at risk in approving a pipeline that could spill into one of the country’s most important freshwater aquifers. He directed the State Department, the State of Nebraska and the pipeline company, TransCanada, to re-route the pipeline away from the sensitive Sandhills region and Ogallala aquifer, the source of drinking and irrigation water not just for Nebraska but for 7 other states. And he committed the Administration to do a more in depth study of the impacts of the pipeline.

There is no small irony in this outcome. What drove the agreement to re-route was a dedicated group of farmers and ranchers that wouldn’t let TransCanada despoil their land and a critical water source for all Nebraskans. As Jane Kleeb, an organizer at Bold Nebraska, said at a hearing here in Washington D.C. this fall, “We are the Sandhills lovers, we are the Ogallala aquifer lovers. We are not asking you to deny this permit, we are begging you”. Ultimately, it was the Republican Governor in Nebraska that insisted on a new pipeline route. But the 60-day demand imposed by his colleagues in Congress would have forced the President to make a decision before that new route was identified. How could the President make a decision on a pipeline that doesn’t even have a route?

But logic is in scarce supply on this issue. The Republican leadership in Congress has made this a conservative cause célèbre, launching a time-clock that would take us backwards into a dirty world of 19th century energy. And even though the pipeline company itself, as recently as today, admitted that there would not be more than 6,000 jobs on any given day, that has not stopped the Republican leadership and their friends in the oil industry from claiming that there would be hundreds of thousands of jobs created. It’s hard to imagine that using the jobs issue – a cynical ploy when so many are desperate for work - is really about anything more than getting Big Oil their pipeline. The fact is that TransCanada has admitted that permanent jobs would be in the hundreds and the State Department estimate was only twenty – yes, twenty – permanent jobs. The only independent report, by Cornell University Global Labor Institute – found that the pipeline would actually be a job killer, stifling clean energy jobs which are growing faster than any other segment of our economy.

The President said it best when he asked if Nebraskans or any other Americans would really trade off the health of their kids for a few thousand jobs. In an interview with a Nebraska TV station, he said, “Folks in Nebraska, like folks all across the country, aren't going to say to themselves, 'We're going to take a few thousand jobs if it means our kids are potentially drinking water that would damage their health." My general attitude is, what's best for the American people? What's best for our economy both short and long term? But what’s best for the health of the American people? Because we don't want for example aquifers adversely affected. Folks in Nebraska obviously would be directly impacted and so we want to make sure we're taking the long view on these issues."

The other argument that is short on logic is that the pipeline is essential to our energy security. If you believe that tar sands oil can change our reliance on oil from the Middle East or other unsavory regions, think again. In a piece in the Washington Post today, Michael Levi of the Foreign Relations Council demolishes that argument. The fact is that the pipeline would divert oil from the Midwest, at least for the next decade or so, because Canada does not produce enough oil to fill all the pipeline capacity coming into the country from Canada. The effect of that would be to put millions of dollars into the pockets of the major oil companies and Canadians at the expense of of Midwesterners.

Just last week, there was a piece on Global TV Canada that made the case pretty clearly. “Right now, Alberta bitumen sells into the U.S. Midwest at $10 to $20 a barrel less than the world price for oil, partly because a glut of oil there is pushing the price down. That price disparity is costing Canada's economy billions, and government's huge amounts in lost royalties. A new study from the University of Calgary says Canada would gain $131 billion in gross domestic product from 2016 to 2030 if Alberta crude gets sold to new markets at the world price. That underscores the importance of pipeline expansion.”

What this is really about is not energy security, but profits. The only way to make progress on achieving energy security over the long run is to reduce our dependence on oil, a point that Retired Brigadier General Steven Anderson made today in the release of NRDC’s new report, “Keystone XL: Undermining U.S. Energy Security and Sending Tar Sands Overseas”.

We’ll see a lot more of the jobs and security arguments in the days ahead. I am sure Majority Leader Boehner will find another Keystone XL countdown to set the clock to. Maybe they’ll try to ram an approval through on the next tax extension. But today, we should thank the President for standing up to reason, for protecting the American public by letting science and good analysis prevail, and saying clearly to the Republicans and oil bullies, I won’t bow to your pressure.

An energy project once thought “too big to fail” has fallen. That doesn’t happen every day.

Will Republican high stakes gamble kill the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline?

2011-12-17T05:43:07Z

Liz Barratt-Brown, Senior Attorney, Washington, DC

In a huge overreach, Senate Republicans insisted yesterday that a provision that would require the President to make a decision on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline be included in the tax extension package. The package is likely to be voted on in the Senate today and go to the House for approval early next week.

NRDC responded by calling out the inclusion as nothing but a political ploy. My colleague Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, issued the following statement:

"Special interest riders do not belong in legislation designed to help the American people. Republicans took the payroll tax-cut extension bill hostage and delivered a year-end bonus to Big Oil. The president went along in order to save hard-working Americans from a tax increase on January 1, 2012. We get that.

“But with the Republicans forcing the president’s hand, he will have no choice but to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline as not in the national interest.”

The President said last week that he would not accept the inclusion of the pipeline tacked on to the tax extension legislation.

Yesterday evening, a senior Administration official made it clear the President intends to stand by his statement. In a Reuters piece entitled, “Obama backs tax deal but pipeline now in doubt”, the senior official is quoted saying that Republican insistence means the pipeline ”almost certainly will not be built” because the President has made clear that he will not approve the pipeline without time for an adequate review of the health, safety and environmental risks.

This view was echoed by Senate Democrats. Senator Schumer, commenting to Bloomberg News, said that the inclusion of the provision was a “Pyrric victory” for the Republicans because the President won’t be forced into a decision.

And the former Chairman of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee and now it’s ranking Democrat made similar comments earlier yesterday, saying, "I think it's shortsighted for the Republicans to force a decision without giving the president enough time to fully consider it…And if they force him to do that, it'd seem to me, the only logical thing for him to do is to say no to it."

Democratic supporters of the President said that the Republicans had likely handed the President “the perfect opportunity” to reject the pipeline and made it clear that they would be watching this closely. Over 50 supporters sent a letter to the President earlier this week expressing their concern about the pipeline and asking the President to stand strong against it.

Similar sentiments were expressed by Bill McKibben, the founder of Tar Sands Action and 350.org and lead organizer of the protests at the White House this summer and fall. The protests brought together a wide range of opponents to the pipeline –Nebraska ranchers, veterens, scientists, clean energy advocates, transit unions, and college students, among many others. And in early November, over 10,000 citizens circled the White House asking the President to reject the pipeline.

The President will undoubtedly be hearing from these constituencies in the days ahead. And the broader American public will also be watching for leadership from the President. After all, if the Republicans get their way and the pipeline is approved, it will only embolden them to hold future legislation hostage.

The Republicans have argued this week that the pipeline would create hundreds of thousands of jobs. They have claimed that it would provide critical energy security benefits to America. The fact is it will do neither. Instead, the pipeline will take the dirtiest oil on the planet, push it through the heartland of America to the Gulf coast, and send it to the highest bidder around the world. Few permanent jobs will be created and the only independent study on the job impact found that the pipeline would kill more jobs than it creates by suppressing clean energy jobs and raising gas prices.

If you don’t believe me, watch these clips – they are of TransCanada admitting that the pipeline will create only hundreds of permanent jobs (even this figure is highly suspect), TransCanada admitting the pipeline will cause gas prices to increase in the Midwest, and TransCanada refusing to put a restriction on export of the oil outside of the U.S.

Couple this with enormous risks to the American heartland and to our climate, and it becomes pretty readily apparent that the only beneficiary of this pipeline is the oil industry and the politicians it bankrolls.

If this provision survives the next week of Congressional debate, there will be a huge spotlight on TransCanada and the claims being made about the pipeline. They may soon regret having escalated this issue. What was a relatively obscure debate about the pipeline has now become a political catfight that is spinning out of control.

The President should make clear that if he is strong-armed into making a decision on the pipeline in the next 60 days, that he will have no choice but to reject it.

President says he's putting American public health and safety first and won't cut deal with Republicans on Keystone XL tar sands pipeline

2011-12-07T21:41:53Z

Liz Barratt-Brown, Senior Attorney, Washington, DC

Today, the President – in a question and answer session with reporters after a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Harper – made it clear he is not backing down from his decision last month to take another year to understand the full implications of the massive tar sands project. The pipeline would carry nearly 1 million barrels a day of highly toxic tar sands crude from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico, where it can be shipped anywhere in the world. It would bisect the heartland of the country, crossing nearly 2000 rivers and streams and cutting through Nebraska’s sensitive Ogallala aquifer and Sandhills region. Last month, the President delayed a decision on the pipeline, saying that there were health and safety concerns, especially in Nebraska, that needed to be addressed. The announcement to take more time also committed to looking more closely at the climate impacts of the pipeline.

In a question about whether he would consider a deal on Keystone XL to get legislation extending the payroll tax cut, the President made it clear he was putting the health and safety of the American public first and that he would reject any effort to tie fast tracking Keystone XL to the payroll tax legislation. When asked if his decision to delay the pipeline was a political one, he shot back that the pipeline is a big project with big consequences and that it was his job to make sure that the right process is followed to reach a good decision for the American public health and safety. This closely tracks what the President said in an interview with a Nebraska news station a month ago.

Republicans in both chambers of Congress have been threatening to attach bills to the payroll tax cut extension that would force the President to make a decision on the pipeline. In a hyperbolic statement today, Majority Leader Boehner said that Keystone XL would create tens of thousands of jobs. TransCanada itself has admitted that the pipeline would ultimately create only a few hundred of jobs and that it would create 6,000 temporary jobs over two years of construction. The Cornell Global Labor Institute – in the only independent study done on jobs – found that the pipeline would in fact be a job killer, suppressing clean energy jobs and slowing the economic recovery in the Midwest by raising gas prices (the pipeline would divert oil from the Midwest). Boehner and others have argued that the pipeline would create greater American energy security but the pipeline would divert oil from the Midwest for years and carry oil to the Gulf where it could be exported anywhere in the world. Oil giant Valero, one of the major shippers on the pipeline, has said it plans to export much of what it refines.

NRDC has been actively working to stop House Republicans from adding so-called riders to the tax extension. With only days left before adjourning for the year, the House leadership has threatened to load up the bill with numerous anti-environmental provisions, including pushing the pipeline through.

Of course, there is a certain irony in all of this. It has in no small part been due to Republican politicians in Nebraska that the pipeline decision has been delayed. The Republic Governor Dave Heineman and Senator Mike Johanns and many ranchers and farmers in Nebraska have made it clear that they will not accept a pipeline that puts their irrigation and drinking water at risk. The pipeline would actually be laid into the Ogallala aquifer, source of drinking water for over 2 million Americans and irrigation water for eight states.

Once again, the extreme anti-environment House is playing politics with the health and safety of the American public.The President asked them to do the people’s business instead.

The President also made it clear to Prime Minister Harper that he was not speeding up the review. In previous meetings, Harper has made it clear that he expects the President to approve the pipeline, and his government has spared no effort to lobby for its approval. Today, Harper took a more conciliatory stance, refusing to comment on internal politics - this likely due both to the President's clear statement on the pipeline and perhaps also due to a decision yesterday that a pipeline in his own country - to the B.C. coast - would also be delayed due to public concerns.

Those who seek to push these dirty oil pipelines through - whether Republicans in Congress or the Prime Minister of Canada - do so at our expense and at the beckoning of Big Oil.

Thanks to the President, today concerns for our health and safety came first.

Why TransCanada (and others) shouldn't be surprised by the recent Keystone XL decision

2011-11-17T18:07:08Z

Liz Barratt-Brown, Senior Attorney, Washington, DC

TransCanada pipes lay stacked and ready to go in advance of securing permit (photo by Dakota Rural Action, Nov 2011)

In 2008, the Canadian company TransCanada proposed a nearly 2,000 mile pipeline that would bisect the heartland of America in order to carry diluted bitumen, raw tar sands diluted with chemicals, to the Gulf Coast ports and refineries. It was a bold proposal, sold to the oil industry as a cheaper way to access the Gulf than the longer route through the Midwest and down from Cushing, Oklahoma. And the Gulf no doubt looked like the grand prize for an industry bullish on its future. If they could get their oil to Texas ports, it could go anywhere in the world. That was the grand plan.

Three years later, the prospects for the pipeline are at best uncertain. On November 1, the Nebraska Legislature began its special session to consider a bill that would give the Governor authority to stop oil pipelines from crossing its sensitive lands. And on November 6, over 10,000 people from the U.S. and Canada encircled the White House asking the President to stand up to Big Oil and reject the pipeline. Days later, the President and State Department announced they would take a harder look, especially at the route through Nebraska and its fragile Sandhills, but also at the climate and other environmental impacts posed by the pipeline and upstream extraction and downstream refining.

So what happened? How did this pipeline that was thought to be such a done deal that TransCanada bought and stacked pipe along the route go awry?

It’s a long story and it started well before the events of the last several weeks.

In 2008, TransCanada’s first pipeline, Keystone One, was approved by the Bush Administration. Because it crossed an international border, it required a Presidential permit under Executive Order 13337 and was met with little objection by other Federal agencies involved in the process. Few in policy circles knew about the tar sands and most of the focus at that time for those concerned about the tar sands was on keeping a brand new federal procurement law, Section 526, from being repealed. The TransCanada Keystone One pipeline would carry tar sands crude from Alberta to Cushing, Oklahoma, a huge oil terminal.

Then in 2009, right after the Obama Administration came into office, another pipeline review was completed and the Enbridge Alberta Clipper was granted its permit. At this point, the pipeline capacity for tar sands oil surged from 800,000 barrels, mostly carried by an aging pipeline system, called the Enbridge Lakehead system, to two million barrels a day. Canada was producing less than a million and a half barrels and a significant portion of that was being used in Canada. In other words, there was already signficant tar sands pipeline overcapacity by 2009.

The fact that Keystone XL, a supersized pipeline (nearly the size of the other two combined), would add another nearly one million barrels a day meant that pipeline overcapacity would be that much greater. That explains why Enbridge, TransCanada’s competitor, repeatedly tried to block the Keystone XL from going forward.

What was clear then, as early as 2009, was that Keystone XL was not really about bringing additional oil into the U.S. – at least not for a decade or more – because Canada, in spite of the boom in the tar sands, could not produce it fast enough. To survive, Keystone XL was going to have to divert oil from the Midwest pipelines – mainly from Enbridge – to fill its pipe to the Gulf. In the Canadian National Energy Board hearings, TransCanada made it clear that they could get a bigger profit for the tar sands producers – to the tune of $4 billion a year – if they could take it out of the Midwest where it was backlogged (and where only a few refineries can refine it) and send it to the Gulf coast where it could get higher global prices. By removing the glut, that $4 billion would effectively be coming out of the pockets of Midwest consumers.

Fast forward to March of 2011 when a well known oil economist, Phil Verleger, would write an op-ed that undoubtedly ripped through the industry. He said that the pipeline would not decrease the price of gas, as the oil lobby and a vocal group of anti-Obama Republicans claimed, it would increase it and increase it in a part of the country hardest hit by the recession. The economist estimated that the cost would be 10-20 cents a gallon in the Midwest and would have a depressing effect on expenditures elsewhere in the economy. He also asserted that the pipeline would serve mainly as an export pipeline to Asia and other foreign countries.

All these arguments were to play a central role in the review of the pipeline and the growing public opposition to it. But let’s go back to the beginning for now.

In the spring of 2010, the State Department was in the midst of a controversial environmental review. Thousands of citizens were sending comments into the State Department expressing concerns, especially those who lined the pipeline route. But the State Department had picked the same contractor that had worked with TransCanada on Keystone One and had worked for Enbridge on the approval of the Alberta Clipper pipeline, Cardno-Entrix, to do the review. It is possible that the contractor, which had been delegated the collection of the comments, did not give the State Department an adequate heads up that a huge controversy was brewing.

What is later to become the core of an Inspector General review, Cardno-Entrix listed TransCanada as a “major client” and there were other conflict of interest issues (they were working for multiple oil major companies with interests in the tar sands and the pipeline). This should have raised red flags for the supervising government agency. But because the State Department did few environmental reviews, and usually delegated the oversight of them to junior foreign service officers who then moved on to other posts, they had little in house experience in executing NEPA and overseeing the process.

In April, the State Department released what was widely viewed as an extremely flawed Draft Environmental Impact Statement. Fifty members of Congress, all the major environmental groups and many regional groups, and 250 entrepreneurs (members of E2, a business advocacy association that partners with NRDC) sent letters raising questions about the review, especially about its disregard of the serious climate impacts of the pipeline. In July, EPA added its voice, and raising similar concerns about climate impacts, sent a comment letter that gave the lowest possible rating to the draft. At the same time, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Congressman Henry Waxman wrote a particularly critical comment letter.

As skepticism was growing that the State Department could do an adequate review, in July of 2010 the Enbridge Lakehead pipeline exploded in the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, spilling nearly a million gallons of tar sands sludge into the river and its tributaries. Booms and skimmers were deployed but this heavy crude simply sank to the bottom where it couldn’t be cleaned up. For months afterwards, images of fouled shorelines and sickened residents reminded the American public of the onshore risks of pipeline spills as the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was also unfolding.

In spite of this rupture, in mid-October, the Secretary of State stated at an event in San Francisco that she was “inclined” to approve the pipeline, even as State was in the midst of conducting its environmental review. That spurred a terse letter from eleven Senators, led by Senator Patrick Leahy, the lead appropriator for the State Department’s budget, who wrote asking their former colleague to answer a series of questions about the adequacy of the review. By the end of the year, State had agreed to carry out a supplemental EIS and append studies on pipeline safety, climate impacts and oil supply scenarios ranging from no pipeline at all to multiple new pipelines. The supplemental was hastily put together – again by the consultant Cardo-Entrix – and released in April of 2011. EPA dug in again, did a detailed comment letter, and gave the review another failing grade.

Then, in July, there was another major pipeline spill, this time in the Yellowstone River in Montana. While it was not a spill of tar sands oil, the pipeline carried tar sands oil. The Kalamazoo River that had had the rupture a year earlier was still closed and clean up costs were north of $500 million. By this time, Keystone One had had problems of its own, with pipeline spills at far greater frequencies than they had promised regulators (one "spill" was a geyser of oil that shot 60 feet into the air and was first reported by a nearby landowner, not by the TransCanada leak detection systems.)

The final environmental impact statement, which followed a few months later in late August 2011, found – in almost a shocking display of dissonance with these events and the growing public and media attention – that there would be “no significant impact” from the pipeline. Very short mention was made of these spills, even though Cardno -Entrix, the contractor for the EIS, was doing clean-up assessments for Enbridge in the Kalamazoo spill.

And the review had failed to do a significant analysis of the pipeline safety issues in spite of the fact that that June, two months earlier, the administrator of the agency overseeing pipeline safety testified before Congress that there were no regulations that govern bitumen pipelines and that she could not go on the record stating that bitumen would behave the same as conventional oil in pipelines. Organizations such as the Pipeline Safety Trust, which had partnered with NRDC earlier to issue a report raising safety concerns, also began to speak out more vocally about the risks.

Adding to these concerns was the fact that the route of the pipeline would carve right through the Ogallala aquifer, one of our most important aquifers, and cross iconic rivers like the Yellowstone. As tensions were rising in Nebraska, where the Ogallala comes both to the surface along the pipeline route in the famous Sandhills region and is at its deepest, TransCanada was digging in and making it clear that they would not move the route. In October, they met with legislators for a four hour session where they made it clear that the refineries couldn’t wait for another environmental review and Nebraska was just going to have to live with the route. That the Republican governor asked the State Department to move the route mattered little. It would go forward, like it or not.

At this point, Americans from all walks of life were making it clear that they opposed the Keystone XL pipeline. Organizations such as the National Farmers Union, Transport Workers Union, Amalgamated Transit Union, National Congress of American Indians, League of Women Voters, mayors, scientists, landowners, dozens of members of Congress and communities that would be hit hardest by refinery pollution in Texas were all weighing in against the pipeline. And the major environmental organizations had made the campaign to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and the expansion of the tar sands a top priority.

In late summer, Bill McKibben and his organization TarSandsAction orchestrated "waves" of arrests, ultimately totalling over 1250 people, in front of the White House. The arrests included many public figures but also many directly affected by extraction, piping, or refining tar sands oil. A substantial number of those arrested had been moved by James Hansen's statements that expansion of the tar sands was "game over" for the climate. Following on the heels of the arrests, nine Nobel Laureates wrote the President in support of the protests and asking him to reject the pipeline. And Robert Redford, a long-tim trustee of NRDC, launched one of the first New York Times video op-ed with a three minute piece urging rejection of the pipeline. Wherever the President traveled in the fall, he was met by protesters asking him to stand firm against Big Oil and say no to the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

Also in September and October, thousands of people flooded public hearings held by the State Department along the pipeline route and in Washington D.C. and, in the largest environmental protest since the 1970s, again organized by McKibben's TarSandsAction, over 10,000 people encircled the White House to send the President the message that they would stand with him in rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline.

There are many more stories, about the revelations that TransCanada had a cozy relationship with officials in the State Department and with the contractor Cardno-Entrix that have led to an Inspector General investigation at the State Department, and about the dearth of reflection of public concerns in the review, that help explain why there was little choice but to restart the review process and to look for alternative routes for the pipeline.

But for now, the President and State Department’s decision to do additional review begins to rectify what was far from a political decision. It would have been one – and a potentially catastrophic one for the American public – had the Secretary of State or the President made a decision to permit the pipeline given the history of the pipeline review and public concern. In fact, that is the government’s duty under the Executive Order - to determine that the pipeline is in the national interest (apart from the industry interests) – before approving its permit.

That there was surprise expressed by TransCanada and some observers in Canada and the U.S. shows that they either arrogantly assumed they would get this pipeline permit in spite of the American public’s concerns or that they were genuinely not paying attention. Their attempt to use jobs as a cynical ploy to counter growing sentiment against the pipeline also began to fall apart, with TransCanada admitting that the 20,000 pipeline jobs were more likely to be in the hundreds after a few thousand temporary jobs building the pipeline had run their course, and with an independent jobs report finding that the pipeline could be a job killer by suppressing the Midwest economy and green jobs. And their arguments that the pipeline would provide energy security were also unraveling.

We may never know why TransCanada so misjudged the response of the American public, but for now, the Administration put the interests of that public ahead of the interests of TransCanada and committed to taking a harder look. Some in industry see this delay as an opportunity to push other proposals forward. Enbridge – TransCanada’s rival – announced its purchase of the Seaway pipeline to reverse oil flow from Texas to the Midwest in order to take tar sands oil from the Midwest down to the Gulf. And just as we expected, the price of oil in the Midwest increased as a result of this announcement, consistent with our argument that these pipelines to the Gulf will increase the price of oil to consumers in the Midwest and that this oil is destined in part for foreign markets, putting a lie to the brash energy security claims of tar sands promoters. See my colleague, Danielle Droitsch’s blog here for more on this story.

That there will be more twists and turns in this story is a certainty - like the Enbridge moves this week - but at the end I believe it is likely that the Keystone XL will either fail on its own accord or be rejected. Even the delay has dealt a major blow to a huge priority project for the oil industry, bent on expanding the tar sands and moving the dirtiest oil on the planet to international markets.

Will Keystone XL's demise stop the tar sands from expanding? Maybe yes, maybe no. But today it is a serious question. And every pipeline proposal, whether that's Enbridge's Gateway, Seaway or Wrangler or a shortened TransCanada's Keystone XL, will be met with much more scrutiny going forward.

One other thing is for sure - a pipeline that was once thought to be a done deal could become a pipedream. And that's something big.

Photo by Josh Lopez at Tar Sands Rally on November 6, 2011

More than 10,000 people encircle the White House asking the President to say no to the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline

2011-11-07T03:22:43Z

Liz Barratt-Brown, Senior Attorney, Washington, DC

photo by David Hawkins; see our video and slideshow here

One year from the Presidential election, over 10,000 citizens encircled the mile and a quarter circumference of the White House three times around with lots of people to spare. They had come from all parts of the country, many from swing states wearing Obama buttons next to their Stop Keystone XL buttons. They were all ages, from kids in strollers to seniors, all participating in the chants and linking arms along the line of people that stretched as far as the eye could see. My kids carried hand-made signs that read “This is my future” with pictures of the pipeline contrasted with windmills. Cars along the perimeter of the White House honked their horns in support. At one point, a line guard shouted “we expected 5,000, we’ve been told we have 12,000 here and that we have surrounded the White House.” Huge cheers went up.

An hour or so earlier, the event began with a big gathering in Lafayette Park, across from the White House. Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org and TarSandsAction, who organized the event and did a brilliant job weaving the day together, started by asking the President to honor the commitments he made to tackle climate change. Jestingly he said, “Where is the President? No more of the stunt double in the White House. We want the real thing”, recalling the words of the President who promised to “end the tyranny of oil”.

John Adams, who co-founded NRDC, came back to the White House to exercise some of the advocacy the President had spoken of when awarding John the Medal of Freedom earlier in the year. He asked where do the energy companies stop – citing deepwater drilling in the Arctic and the Gulf, mountain top removal, and fracking as well as digging up the vast Boreal forest of Canada for tar sands. He called the thousand plus people who had been arrested in August heros for standing up and taking us from the deep dependence on fossil fuels into climate sanity. Along similar lines, Mark Ruffalo, the Academy Award winning producer of the movie Gasland, said we have entered the era of extreme energy and finished with “we want the sunlight revolution to begin”.

Naomi Klein, the Canadian author and activist, came out swinging, “We are so over the environmental movement versus the labor movement. We aren't killing jobs. It’s about reinventing the world economy from the ground up.” She also spoke about Canada’s threats to send oil to Asia if they don’t get the Keystone XL pipeline, saying that they’d have to do it through British Columbia, her home, and that there was no way that was going to happen. So, she concluded, “We don't just have the White House surrounded. We have the Tar Sands surrounded!" Roger Touissant, the head of the Transit Workers of America, also addressed the jobs issue saying, “We want jobs not lies. We want jobs but not as gravediggers for the planet”.

These are just snipets of so many powerful words that were echoed back by an exuberant crowd.

In August, when I witnessed the two weeks of rolling arrests, I felt the power of a movement awakening. Today was a day to celebrate a movement in full swing. Arguments for the pipeline seemed to pale in comparison to the message that people were carrying directly to their President: We want a future of clean energy, not dirty energy. We want you to lead the way. We have hope that you will make the right decision and be true to your base.

No matter how many press stories frame this as a jobs versus environment, or energy security versus environment story – as NPR did in their very disappointing interview with Richard Harris this morning – the speakers and the people consistently challenged this narrow view. As Bill McKibben rightly pointed out, the only study not paid for by the oil industry found that the pipeline would in fact kill more jobs than it would create. More and more unions are joining the anti-pipeline movement, as the Domestic Workers did this week.

And on energy security, it is absurd to argue that this pipeline provides energy security when it is clear that the pipeline would be a conduit for dirty oil, strip mined from the home of Canada’s First Nation people and then sent straight across the heartland of America in the straightest possible line to the Gulf of Mexico, where it could then be shipped anywhere in the world.

Well, the people aren’t buying their jobs and energy security arguments. And the increasingly desperate rhetoric of TransCanada proves that they know it.

I’m with John Adams who said it’s a reawakening of the environmental movement and one of the best days he’s had over his over fifty years as an environmental leader. And I’m with the Hip Hop Caucus leader who said this was our 21st Century lunch counter. And I’m with Bill McKibben who said let’s forget about that red state versus blue state thing. It's like the last time a big asteroid hit the planet, but now the asteroid is us.

Today was a good day to feel the power of the people.

Photo Credit: Josh Lopez/NRDC

Robert Redford speaks out against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline; asks the President to stand up for the "energy future you know we deserve"

2011-10-18T12:58:13Z

Liz Barratt-Brown, Senior Attorney, Washington, DC

In a New York Times video opinion piece posted today, Robert Redford gives an impassioned pitch to the President to deny the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. In a three minute interview, interspersed with beautiful images of the Great Plains and of wind, solar and other renewable energy, he concludes, ”It’s the 21st Century, we’re not about to turn back now. Mr. President, stand up for American workers and our land. Stand up for energy security. Stand up for the energy future you know we deserve. Say no to the Keystone XL pipeline. “

The massive dirty energy pipeline would bisect the United States, cutting across the sensitive Sandhills and Ogallala aquifer in the Great Plains, the breadbasket of America. Redford describes the land threatened by Big Oil – land that evokes “the majesty of our country and spirit of our people” - and says the pipeline would carry the dirtiest oil on the planet, and firmly wed our energy future to “the destructive ways of our past”. He continues that it would promote one of the most damaging industrial practices ever devised and points out that a failure could contaminate nearly 5 million gallons of fresh water, recalling the recent oil disasters in the Gulf of Mexico, the Yellowstone River, and the North Sea. He asks why would we risk a repeat of these spills, for what? To further enrich the oil companies that posted a profit of over $67 Billion in the first half of this year alone? He then raises the specter of pipeline failures on other pipelines built and operated by Canada’s pipeline giant, TransCanada.

Redford takes on the major arguments put forward by TransCanada head on - that there is no way it will leak, that technology is so advanced that the pipeline can be operated safely, that they will leave the environment better off than when they started. To that he quips “Are you kidding?” And he continues that another argument you may hear is that the pipeline will generate jobs. He says, “Sure, it will create a few thousand jobs but then what? By deepening our dependence on oil, the pipeline will be a job killer”. He continues that the pipeline job promises are a “pipe dream” and a cynical attempt to pit workers against the environment. He points to better jobs in clean energy, citing the fact that nearly 3 million Americans already work in the clean energy sector building wind mills, solar energy, and energy efficient cars and buildings, and says “that to me is the future”.

I will always think of Robert Redford as the Sundance Kid. He defined the West for me when I was young. So it is great to hear his voice on this issue, defending the Great Plains and grassy Sandhills. And it is no surprise that he is speaking out and addressing the President directly, as he has long been an outspoken defender of our public lands and for clean energy.

Ultimately the decision is the President’s decision, even though the process has been delegated to the State Department under an Executive Order. But the State Department process has been corrupted by its close relationship with TransCanada and with its contractor Cardno Entrix, which wrote a highly faulty environmental review.

Another New York Times piece today focuses on the pipeline company, TransCanada, and its use of eminent domain threats to bully landowners to turn over their land. As Redford says, the President should stand up and protect these people and their land. And he should stand up to protect all of us from the certain climate destruction that this pipeline and expansion of the tar sands would bring. The time has come for the President to step in and take responsibility for this decision.

In 2008, the President promised to “end the tyranny of oil” but has done little to stand up to Big Oil. Please take the time to watch this great video and then ask the President to stand up to Big Oil by going to NRDC’s action site, StopTar.org.

Powerful voices along the Keystone XL pipeline path dominate final hearing

2011-10-07T22:07:24Z

Liz Barratt-Brown, Senior Attorney, Washington, DC

Today, the State Department held its final hearing on whether or not the massive Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is in our "national interest". The Secretary of State must make this affirmative finding before permitting the pipeline.

The hall was crowded with people who had come in some cases thousands of miles to make their case that the pipeline was not in our national interest. They included ranchers from Nebraska, clean energy advocates, a retired Brigadier General, a Mayor from California, a whistle-blower pipeline inspector, a representative of the Transit Workers Union, a NHL legend goalkeeper, and - most poignantly - many of our First Nation and Native American colleagues living with the on-going tar sands disaster in Alberta and the Northwest Territories and their partner tribes down through the Great Plains. There were also lots and lots of young people, some of whom had taken a break from the Wall Street protests to lend their voices. This follows on two weeks of arrests in August that also drew many of the same voices.

Of course, there were also pipeline supporters. They included the President of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the President of the American Petroleum Council, the Consumers Energy Alliance, an big oil backed group, and representatives of the pro-pipeline labor organization LiUNA and their many "sitters" wearing orange shirts who clapped and booed throughout the day.

Of the 71 speakers in four hours, the opposition clearly dominated and was far more diverse than the support. The most heart wrenching stories came from those living with the oil disaster in Canada, the First Nations of the Cree and Dene peoples, and those with the most to lose if the pipeline goes forward, the ranchers from Nebraska whose land is literally awash in the waters of the Ogallala aquifer. They asked what would happen to their land and livelihoods if their water was poisoned by a pipeline rupture. You can see more about their story by reading NRDC's home page coverage of Ben Gotschall, the Cowboy Poet Lauriet of the Nebraska hearings. There is also an excellent short video you can watch that covers the testimony at the Atkinson, Nebraska hearing in the Sandhills region.

Our first concern was that the State Department hear from the people who had travelled from afar. But we also had the opportunity to speak (my colleague Anthony Swift was number 71, closing down the hearing with his testimony on the pipeline risks of pushing toxic, corrosive tar sands through pipes regulated to carry conventional oil).

My topic was our dependency on oil and how the pipeline would lock us into 50 or more years of the dirtiest oil on the planet. My colleague, Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, read into the record excerpts from a letter sent to the President this week by over 200 business leaders and my colleague, Danielle Droitsch, discussed how the pipeline would drive the expansion of the tar sands in Canada and the implications for our climate.

I post my comments below but I hope that, in future blogs, my colleagues and I can do more to highlight the stories and post photos of the remarkable people who came to the Nation's Capital today to tell their stories.

My prepared statement follows:

When President Obama was elected, he promised – in his words – to end the “Tyranny of oil”. In a speech last March, the President said:

"The United States of America cannot afford to bet our long-term prosperity, our long-term security on a resource that will eventually run out, and even before it runs out will get more and more expensive to extract from the ground. We can’t afford it when the costs to our economy, our country, and our planet are so high....

The only way for America's energy supply to be truly secure is by permanently reducing our dependence on oil….And we’ve got to do it quickly."

Approval of the Keystone XL pipeline would take the country in the opposite direction by increasing our dependency on oil. That’s why esteemed military leaders, like General Anderson, are speaking out against this pipeline. They understand that it will lock us into 50 years or more of the dirtiest oil on the planet.

U.S. oil consumption is on the decline. That trend is expected to continue as auto and truck efficiency increases. The U.S already has 2 million barrels a day of tar sands pipeline capacity but imports only a million. This pipeline is not needed.

So why the big push? What the oil industry really wants is to get tar sands bitumen out of the Midwest where there is a glut and to the Gulf coast, where there is more refining capacity for dirty crude and it can command higher prices.

According to TransCanada’s own testimony, there is $4 billion more a year in profits to the tar sands industry if it can move the oil to the Gulf, coming mainly out of the pockets of Midwesterners.

Of course, once it gets to the coast it can go anywhere in the world, a reality that severely undercuts arguments that the pipeline will provide energy security for our country.

Our security is our clean water. Our security is in the barrel of oil we don’t use. Our security is in building our economy and our transportation systems around energy that we harness ourselves and that doesn’t run out – wind and solar and alternative fuels.

NRDC’s analysis shows we can reduce our oil use by over 4 million barrels a day in the next decade using today’s technologies. Already the 2016 auto efficiency standards will save us more than the Keystone XL pipeline could ever transport. By 2030, we can reduce our use of oil by 6 million barrels a day, cutting our imports by over half.

But the Keystone XL pipeline takes us in the other direction and would desecrate the Ogallala - a national treasure. For these reasons alone, this pipeline is not in the national interest.

On behalf of our millions of members and activists, some of whom are here today, we ask that you - Madame Secretary and Mr. President - start to end the “tyranny of oil” here and now by finding that this pipeline – which benefits few and puts so much at risk – is not in the national interest.

The NYTs editorializes for the 4th time against Keystone XL pipeline as hearings rage and Cornell releases important jobs report

2011-10-03T19:54:05Z

Liz Barratt-Brown, Senior Attorney, Washington, DC

Homemade signs in Nebraska near site of hearing. Photo credit: Jane Kleeb.

The U.S. State Department has said it will make a decision on the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline by the end of the year. Because the pipeline is transboundary, the decision is delegated to the State Department.

Today’s New York Times says that a decision to permit the pipeline would be a mistake and asks the Secretary to say no. This is very helpful indeed. Not only do the views of the New York Times editorial board carry weight but this is, after all, the Secretary’s hometown newspaper. Hopefully the Secretary will take note and slow the process down so that the objections raised by the New York Times - pipeline safety concerns, the impact of likely spills on one of the country’s largest aquifers, the Ogallala, and the carbon emissions from increasing our dependence on this dirty and forest destroying crude from Canada’s boreal – can be carefully considered as she – and other agencies – evaluate whether this pipeline is in our “national interest”. The Secretary must make this affirmative decision before permitting the pipeline.

This week and last, there have been State Department hearings up and down the pipeline route and there will be one in Washington D.C. at the end of the week. Nowhere have the hearings been more heated than in Nebraska, where the pipeline would be the first oil pipeline to cross the hallowed Sandhills and Ogallala aquifer. At the hearings, nurses, mothers, farmers and ranchers – ordinary people - have stood in line for hours to get the chance to give short statements to the State Department. State officials, like Nebraska State Senator Ken Haar, have also spoken. Senator Haar had this to say to the State Department, “With all due respect, you don’t give a damn about Nebraska”. He continued, “Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting. We are in a fight for our water.”

The pipeline route goes through the heart of the Ogallala aquifer, which is one of the nation’s – and world’s - largest freshwater aquifers. The aquifer provides drinking water to millions of Americans and irrigation water to America’s bread basket. Keystone One, the small sister to Keystone XL, has leaked more than 14 times since it began operation last year, a legacy of spills documented by my colleague Anthony Swift in testimony before Congress earlier this year. That there will be a spill is not a question but a certainty.

That is why the New York Times singles out the Ogallala in its editorial, "An existing pipeline carrying tar sands oil — owned by TransCanada, the Keystone XL’s operator — was forced to shut down for repairs after springing two leaks last May in North Dakota and Kansas. That is one reason why Dave Heineman, Nebraska’s Republican governor, has asked that the new pipeline be rerouted. He fears a spill could pollute the Ogallala Aquifer, a crucial water source beneath the Great Plains."

The Times editorial then took on the heart of the arguments for the pipeline – that it will help us wean ourselves off of Middle Eastern oil and that it will provide plentiful jobs. On energy security, the Times pointed out that most of the oil will be controlled by foreign companies that are likely to export it out of the U.S. – including multi-national Valero, which has made statements to this effect. While saying that they were sympathetic with the jobs the pipeline proponents say will be generated, they took on the TransCanada jobs claims and suggested that “the best hope for long-term job creation will come from the development of renewable and alternative energy sources.”

That is the conclusion of a report released last week by the Cornell Global Labor Institute which found that the pipeline could kill more jobs than it creates because of the economic damage from likely spills, a hike in gas prices in the Midwest, and the suppression of jobs in the green sector. The report found that more than 2.7 million jobs have been created in the green sector, which is one of the few sectors experiencing growth.

It also found that most of the steel pipe had already been bought from foreign sources – in India and South Korea – and that nearly half of what TransCanada said it would spend on the project had already been spent. And even if the pipeline proponent’s wildly inflated claims for direct, indirect, and spin off jobs were correct, they wouldn’t change the sad reality of our current 9.1% unemployment rate. The Institute concluded, “KXL will not be a major source of jobs, nor will it play any substantial role at all in putting Americans back to work”. Consumers in the Midwest will have to pay more for gas (10-20 cents more per gallon) and that will sap spending on other things that generate jobs.

At the hearings, TransCanada bussed in union members from the teamsters and pipefitters who were mostly from out-of-state. They wore orange shirts and there were some near scuffles between opponents and proponents as tempers flared. This has created reporting that pitches environment against jobs – the old rallying cry of the American Petroleum Institute, the Chamber of Commerce and others that seek to tear down the progress we’ve made in cleaning up our air and water and growing our economy at the same time over the last thirty years.

But the environment and jobs do go together. Had Congress acted on climate legislation, hundreds of thousands of jobs would have been created in clean energy technology – good permanent jobs.

As the newly minted U.S. Energy Security Council’s mission statement says, “The council’s goal is to highlight a fresh approach to solving America’s oil predicament, one that aims to turn oil from a strategic commodity, as salt once was, to just another commodity, as salt is today, by addressing the root cause of our vulnerability – oil’s virtual monopoly over transportation fuel.“

And this is no radical greenie organization – as TransCanada likes to portray us. It is made up of many former defense secretaries and heads of the Navy and Air Force as well as former national security advisors, even the former President of Shell Oil North America.

This is likely what the New York Times had in mind when it concluded,“There is also the larger question of whether this country should keep conducting business as usual — that is, succumbing to the status quo of politics and big oil — or whether it will seriously grapple with the reality of climate change. We again urge Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to say no to the Keystone XL.”

Let’s hope the Secretary is reading her paper today.

Nine Nobel Laureates - including the Dalai Lama and Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu - urge President to deny permit for tar sands pipeline

2011-09-07T23:02:37Z

Liz Barratt-Brown, Senior Attorney, Washington, DC

“It is your decision to make”

That is how the strongly worded letter to the President from nine Nobel Laureates starts. The letter urges the President to deny the permit for a massive tar sands pipeline that would run from Alberta to Texas and over one of the nation’s largest fresh water aquifers.

The letter continues:

“The night you were nominated for president, you told the world that under your leadership – and working together – the rise of the oceans will begin to slow and the planet will begin to heal. You spoke of a clean energy economy. This is a critical moment to make good on that pledge, and make a lasting contribution to the health and well being of everyone of this planet.”

The letter refers to a major decision that the President will make to approve or disapprove of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which would expand U.S. reliance on the dirtiest oil on the planet at a time when we should be committing ourselves, as the President said, to working together to slow climate change.

That the letter is addressed to a Nobel Laureate is also significant. When the Nobel Committee announced the President’s Nobel Prize, the Committee said, “Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting.” In his speech upon learning he’d won the prize, the President said:

“We cannot accept the growing threat posed by climate change, which could forever damage the world that we pass on to our children -- sowing conflict and famine; destroying coastlines and emptying cities. And that's why all nations must now accept their share of responsibility for transforming the way that we use energy.”

But will he accept the responsibility to transform the way we use energy? The opening salvo - “It is your decision to make” - reflects the fact that this decision will be his and only his to make. Congress, for a change, has no say in whether the pipeline is approved. Or will he, in the words of his chief climatologist, James Hansen, “choose the dirty needle with no real intention of solving the addiction.”

Recently, James Hansen said that approval of Keystone XL would lead to more exploitation of tar sands oil, which would mean “it is essentially game over” for the climate. That is because the tar sands reserves are second only to Saudi Arabia. Current production is now at 1.79 million barrels per day. Projects that have been approved will increase production to nearly 4 million day, and, if all those projects seeking approval or announced by oil companies go forward, production will more than quadruple from today’s levels to over 7 million barrels a day.

And how does this impact the climate? According to the EPA, the emissions impact of the Keystone XL pipeline would be roughly 27 million metric tons of carbon (above emissions from the equivalent amount of conventional oil). This is equal to emissions from 7 coal fired power plants, putting 5 million more cars on the road, or eliminating the emissions savings for EPA’s recent truck efficiency rule towards the end of this decade. If the oil industry is able to expand tar sands production to as much as 7.6 million barrels per day, and using the same methodology EPA used for Keystone XL, the emissions created from producing this much tar sands would be as much as 228 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually.

The U.S. is the only major customer outside of Canada for tar sands oil. To sell all this oil, the industry needs access to an international port. Due to signficant opposition, no pipelines have been approved to Canada’s east or west coasts. Sadly, both the Administration, in its flawed review of the pipeline, and certain analysts, have blithely accepted the premise –peddled ferociously by the Canadian political leaders (all from Calgary, it should be noted) – that the tar sands oil will be developed regardless of whether Keystone XL goes forward. This premise falls apart when you dig a little deeper and read the industry’s own appeals for approval of the pipeline. Keystone XL is the only viable prospect for moving tar sands oil into the global market. Without this market for the land-locked tar sands, most of these expansions would be unlikely to occur.

Expansion of the tar sands ultimately means expansion of the oil industry’s power over our political process. The same forces pushing for the pipeline are also busy attacking the very policies that will reduce carbon in our fuels and our dependence on oil. In spite of their claims that this pipeline will deliver “energy security from a friendly neighbor,” Canada does not give the U.S. a break when prices are high. True energy security comes from reducing our demand for oil and that will put money back in the pockets of average Americans faster than any tar sands pipeline.

So when the President sits down to consider whether this pipeline is “in the national interest”, he’ll have to decide whose side he is on. And as he considers a response to this letter, he might think back to his own statements as a Nobel Laureate, and ask how he can best play that “constructive role” envisioned for him by a hopeful Nobel Committee back in the heady days of 2009.

Keystone XL tar sands pipeline makes history as more than 1000 arrested in protest at White House

2011-09-02T23:46:33Z

Liz Barratt-Brown, Senior Attorney, Washington, DC

Protesters have included scientists, ranchers, and celebrities - you can take action by going to www.StopTar.org

The protests have marked a watershed for the environmental community and for civil disobedience as a powerful democratic tool. The number of citizens arrested engaging in peaceful sit-ins at the White House tipped to over 1,000 in the next to last day of the protests. The collective message to the President is that Americans want a secure future – one in which we don’t destroy our lands, pollute our waters and air, and poison communities – to make our energy. A future in which we build-up our communities and increase ecosystem resilience, not tear them down. A future in which we harness energy from the wind and the sun using American know how and technology instead of scraping the bottom of the barrel for our energy. As James Hansen, the President’s chief climatologist said earlier this week before being arrested, we want to find a leader big enough to help us realize our dreams.

Bill Erasmus is the National Chief of the Dene Nation living downstream from the tar sands

Today was also a watershed as it brought together indigenous leaders from Canada and the United States, many of whom have been on the front lines of the tar sands battle in Canada and along existing pipeline routes in the U.S. These leaders came to join hands with one another and with newcomers to the battle. As they spoke, they held beautiful photographs of the natural landscape of their Boreal forest home and horrifying pictures of the tar sands development. In each photo, a person holds the sign, “OBAMA – CHOOSE HOPE NOT TAR SANDS”. As Naomi Klein, author of the Shock Doctrine, put it today, it is hard to look at the tar sands and allow it to continue. So we often look away. These past two weeks have focused the American public as never before on the tar sands.

Certainly, the tar sands debate will never be the same. I remember when – for me – the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development transformed into the Rio Earth Summit as I looked down in the huge conference hall and saw Ted Turner, Al Gore and the Dalai Lama walking together. Over the last two weeks, a new or renewed solidarity has been born – between Canadians and Americans, those living downstream from the giant pits and those living along the proposed pipeline path, those in the labor community and those in the environmental community fighting for our planet - as one labor leader put it today, we all have skin in that. And some big personalities have engaged.

Now the challenge is to take all the energy that has been created and turn it loose on the next and last phase of the Keystone XL pipeline review – the National Interest Determination. I have huge faith that Bill McKibben and his organization, 350.org, can do it alongside the already large and effective network of groups working on the tar sands.

So here is what we have ahead of us. The State Department must – under an Executive Order that governs the pipeline review process – make an affirmative finding that the pipeline is in the national interest. Agencies have 90 days to comment on issues related to national interest and to ask for additional analysis so they can make their recommendation to the Secretary of State. If they ask for additional information, the 90 days is put on hold until that information is generated. That is why the Administration’s repeated insistence that they will make a decision by the end of the year is contrary to this collective process. And it is why it is important that the Department of Energy clarified in a statement today that the Secretary of Energy has not made a decision about the merits of the pipeline.

For cooperating agencies to participate meaningfully, they must have thorough and accurate analysis to weigh what will be many competing arguments. That thorough and accurate analysis is not available through the FEIS – a highly flawed document written mainly by consultants with a cozy relationship with TransCanada, the company seeking the permit to construct Keystone XL. For a thorough review, there is a long list of issues that will have to be considered, including:

A robust review of alternatives to the oil the pipeline would import
A review of alternative routes – routes that would avoid the heart of the Ogallala aquifer and other sensitive ecosystems such as the Yellowstone River that just suffered from a major oil spill
A review of the refinery by refinery impacts on already beleaguered communities in the Gulf
An assessment of the impact of this pipeline on moving to a clean energy economy
An assessment of the increased spill and corrosion risks of transporting tar sands bitumen through pipelines (there are no regulations that govern acidic and corrosive bitumen)
An assessment of whether the pipeline will create access to a global market for tar sands oil, undercutting the main argument in defense of this pipeline, namely that it will provide energy security benefits to the U.S. (Oil Change International released an excellent report on this point this week)

These analyses, all of which EPA has also asked for, should be generated to uphold the President’s commitment, made clear in a question he fielded at a clean energy event in Pennsylvania earlier this year, that the review be thorough and science-based. And they should dictate the deadline for making a decision, not an arbitrary end-of-the year date.

In a blog posted yesterday, Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations missed a key point that for all the debate about the Keystone XL, much of this critical analysis is still missing. Instead he chose to single out statements of pipeline opponents without the larger context. For instance, he accused NRDC Executive Director Peter Lehner of focusing unduly on the likely export of diesel fuel from Gulf refineries refining Keystone XL oil. But Lehner’s larger point is that the pipeline will not provide greater “energy security” to the U.S. as its proponents argue. Instead, Lehner says it will undermine our security because it will compromise our air, water, and clean energy future. And he points out that those who believe that the pipeline will directly benefit from use of this oil, should think again. Nit picking aside, how would Levi answer the arguments put forward by the pipeline proponents – does this pipeline really increase U.S. energy security? Would it lower gas prices? Would it really protect the U.S. from oil price and political volatility given that the price of oil is set by forces outside of North America anyway? Based on his previous writing on this issue, I don’t believe even Mr. Levi really believes the answer to these questions is yes.

At a time when there is no national climate change legislation, no regulations governing diluted bitumen (the form of tar sands oil to be shipped through the pipeline), and when our global warming emissions have exceeded what the atmosphere can hold without major climate disruption, permitting a pipeline to bring nearly 1 million barrels more a day of the highest carbon oil on the planet to the U.S. Gulf coast, refine it there, leaving the pollution behind, to potentially be exported as refined products – whether that is gas, diesel, or jet fuel – is clearly not – as Mr. Lehner says - in our national interest.

Naomi Klein makes perhaps the most important point - deepening our dependence on tar sands oil is not only an energy issue, it is a values issue. Allowing the tar sands to be extracted, with all the attendant damage to the land and people, warps our values as human beings. We must keep our gaze on the tar sands destruction. That’s what the protests have done. They have helped us keep our gaze on what is actually happening on the ground, hard and painful as that is, so we can be motivated to create a better future.

While NRDC does not, as an institution, engage in civil disobedience, the author was arrested with two of her tar sands colleagues on Tuesday on a vacation day. See NRDC President Frances Beinecke's blog on the arrests here.

DOD weighs in on fuel procurement provision, Section 526, saying repeal would take country in wrong direction

2011-07-21T15:24:39Z

Liz Barratt-Brown, Senior Attorney, Washington, DC

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee (E&NR) is expected to vote on a bill that would repeal of Section 526, the embattled provision of the 2007 energy bill that requires that federal agencies not contract for fuels that create more global warming pollution than conventional fuels. These fuels, primarily tar sands oil, oil shale and liquid coal, would vastly increase emissions from transportation, making it nearly impossible for the U.S. to start to curb emissions from this important sector.

Ever since its passage in 2007, there have been repeated efforts to repeal it. Why has this one paragraph section been under such assault?

The companies that would benefit from greater exploitation of these dirty fuels have powerful allies in Congress. And Canada, the country that most people associate with environmental stewardship and natural beauty, has spent and is spending millions of dollars on hired guns (mostly past Ambassadors) to push for a repeal to protect the expansion of the tar sands in northern Alberta. Earlier this week, David Wilkins, the former U.S. Ambassador to Canada in the Bush Administration and now a newly minted lobbyist for the Canadian oil producers, said that repeal of Section 526 was a top priority.

Things might look a grim for this “little section that could” if it weren’t for the recent decision by the Department of Defense (DOD) to enter the fray to defend the provision against repeal in this committee and exemption from funding in the appropriations committees of Congress.

This week, E&NR has released statements entitled “What Would Our Troops Do? America’s Soldier’s/Sailors/Airmen/Marines support Section 526. Here’s why” and “What Would Our Troops Do? (Part II).” These statements come on the heels of a short, but powerful statement by DOD that was sent to the Hill on July 5th saying that it was in the U.S. national security interest to move away from our overdependence on non-renewable fuels. My colleague, Brian Siu, blogged on this statement, listing a stream of military quotes in support of Section 526. And I blogged about how the arguments made in the DOD statement undercut the national security arguments made by proponents of dirty fuels.

The first release, on Tuesday, was of a letter sent by Assistant Secretary of Defense to the Chairman of the Committee, Senator Bingaman. It said:

…repeal or exemption could hamper the Department’s efforts to provide better energy options to our warfighters and further increase America’s reliance on non-renewable fuels. Our dependence on those types of fuels degrades our national security, negatively impacts our economy, and harms the environment. [Italics added for emphasis]

This is a bombshell of a statement if you have been in the trenches for the last three plus years defending this provision. As I explain in my previous blog, the major argument of those who seek repeal is that this provision interferes with our national security interests in burning ever more oil and coal.

The second release, yesterday, is a blog written by Assistant Secretary of Defense for Operational Energy Plans and Programs, Sharon Burke. She wrote about a new vehicle delivered to the Pentagon this week that is dubbed the “Fuel Efficiency Demonstrator-Alpha (FED-Alpha).” She explains that this vehicle has the protection of an armored Humvee but beats the Humvee by reducing fuel use by up to 70%, a critical feature because “each gallon of gas counts in a war,” citing that a $1 rise in the price of a barrel of oil translates to approximately $130 million over the course of a year for DOD. “…And DOD personnel are well aware of the security and economic consequences of U.S. and global dependence on oil, trends that will get worse with time.” She continues, saying we shouldn’t “trade one security challenge for another” by exacerbating climate change and the burden that it could have on militaries around the world as instability and conflict increases.

The blog concludes that “repeal or exemption of Section 526, as is being discussed on Capitol Hill, is at best unnecessary. Although the Department will strive to make the right choices in any case, repeal could complicate the Department’s efforts to provide better energy options to our warfighters and take advantage of the promising developments in homegrown biofuels.”

DOD has made it clear that these dirty fuels are not in our national interest but rather in the interest of those that would keep us dependent on them to the detriment of our society and our military. We have better choices, and who could have said it better than DOD in these two very helpful statements in support of Section 526.

When members of E&NR vote to repeal Section 526, they can no longer hide behind the premise that their opposition is in defense of our national security. It will be clear that they are voting in defense of the major oil and coal companies, many of whom have lined their war chests with campaign contributions. The fight will continue, but for now, it is a big help to Section 526 to have DOD on its side.

DOD backs a federal ban on procurement of dirty fuels as Congress debates repeal

2011-07-12T12:33:53Z

Liz Barratt-Brown, Senior Attorney, Washington, DC

In a short, but strongly worded statement, the Department of Defense (DOD) has weighed in in support of Section 526, the provision of the 2007 energy bill that requires federal agencies to make sure that the fuels they buy do not create more pollution and exacerbate global warming. The statement was sent to Congress on July 5 and reported in The Hill on July 8.

As our fossil fuel mix becomes more energy intensive, this provision requires that agencies not procure fuels with higher greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels. The House Defense Appropriations Act would bar the use of federal funds for implementing Section 526, thereby favoring the procurement of dirtier, more energy intense fuels by the DOD and other federal agencies.

The provision is critically important in building a secure demand for alternatives to high carbon fuels, such as sustainably grown next generation biofuels, and efficiency. This is for two reasons: First, DOD is the largest user of fuel in the country. This makes it an important and secure source for suppliers. Second, the U.S. government sends a strong signal to the private sector in its procurement policies. Signaling – as it did in its statement issued last week – that it supports the development of lower carbon fuels helps nascent biofuels companies gain a foothold in the fuels market. For the military, these alternatives are critical as moving fuel in war situations is difficult, costly and deadly. My colleague, Dan Weiss, at the Center for American Progress recently blogged on why the military is moving rapidly towards renewable fuels and why “the House wants to slow the military’s clean energy march.”

But what’s interesting is that DOD went quite a bit farther than supporting fuel diversification for its own operations. DOD stated that it is in our national security interest to keep Section 526 in place because reliance on non-renewable fuels actually degrades our national security and negatively impacts our economy. Here is the most important excerpt from DOD’s statement, regarding the idea of exempting the military from Section 526:

This exemption could further increase America's reliance on non-renewable fuels. Our dependence on those types of fuels degrades our national security, negatively impacts our economy, and harms our planet. This exemption would also send a negative signal to America's advanced biofuel industry and could result in adverse impacts to U.S. job creation, rural development efforts, and the export of world leading technology.

This is an extraordinary paragraph on a number of counts:

1) DOD is saying that reliance on non-renewable fuels actually degrades our national security, presumably because this reliance perpetuates our use of fossil fuels, most of which we have to import and that contribute to destabilizing climate change. Increasingly, military figures have weighed in with similar statements – such as Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn and Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus – but this is the first time we know of that the DOD has taken a position on Section 526 (Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Hicks, can be seen here testifying that “we are comfortable with Section 526”). Opponents of Section 526 have long argued that we need high carbon fuels, such as tar sands, liquid coal and oil shale, for our energy security. This has been the mainstay of their arguments in favor of the expansion of these fuels.

2) DOD is saying that reliance on non-renewable fuels negatively impacts our economy, presumably because it keeps us addicted to oil which is controlled by an unstable and expensive global market regardless of where the oil is produced. Opponents of Section 526 have also argued that the provision bars the development of fuels such as tar sands that will reduce the price of oil, even though the reality is quite different (Canada has not given the U.S. a break in price from the global market during high price spikes and is now pushing hard for a pipeline to the Gulf Coast to get higher prices for its tar sands oil).

3) DOD is arguing that these fuels harm our planet. That statement reflects a growing concern within the military establishment that climate change will contribute significantly to the depletion of resources vital to human survival such as water and food. But it could also create greater numbers of refugees as unpredictable weather created flooding, drought, failed crops, and heat waves. The President argued in his maiden speech abroad in February 2009 that we now have to think about national security as a combination of energy security, economic security and climate security. The three need to be in place to realize national security. Opponents of Section 526 have given undue weight to an increasingly outdated and dangerous idea that our energy security can only be accomplished through the acquisition and use of polluting, costly and destabilizing fossil fuels.

4) DOD is arguing that repealing Section 526 would harm the U.S. biofuels industry which it argues is creating jobs, including in rural areas, and technologies that could create an important export market for the U.S. For this reason, the biofuels industry has become more active in supporting this provision. However, their support is met head-on by the opposition of the powerful and very active oil industry lobby intent on keeping their domination of the fuels market. For Canada, the stakes are particularly high as the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline debate continues to raise questions about the negative impact of our growing reliance on tar sands oil – whether that is due to potential spills along the pipeline route that could pollute key drinking and agricultural water sources, such as the Ogallala aquifer in the American Heartland, or locking the U.S. into high carbon fuel use for decades to come. A sustainable advanced biofuels industry could help replace foreign oil – which is foreign even if it comes from Canada – with home grown and renewable energy, creating jobs here in the U.S.

Finally, DOD states that the existing provision has “not, in any way, prevented the Department from meeting its current mission needs.” If that is the case, then there seems to be no reason to fix what is not broken but lots of reasons to keep this important provision in place.

The DOD statement could be a game-changer on the eve of the latest rounds of oil industry backed attempts to repeal the provision. But that will require the many members of Congress that have not weighed in on this provision to take the side of the DOD and put an end to this summer’s repeal efforts.

EPA gives Keystone XL tar sands pipeline review a failing grade, asks for hearings before review is finalized

2011-06-07T18:55:29Z

Liz Barratt-Brown, Senior Attorney, Washington, DC

Today, the EPA posted their comment letter, chastising the State Department for a review that is “environmentally objectionable” and provides insufficient information to decision makers regarding the safety and impact of deepening our dependence on the dirtiest oil on the planet. EPA also called for hearings before the final review is issued so that communities especially hard hit by dirty air around refineries in Texas and Louisiana have the opportunity to get their concerns incorporated. The State Department refused to hold such hearings during the supplemental review in spite the thousands of requests to do so.

Instead, the State Department is holding fast to a schedule that undercuts the review process and puts Americans at risk so that a foreign pipeline company can make more profits for itself and its shippers, by raising the price of oil. As Congressman Waxman said recently at a hearing on a bill that would expedite the decision-making on Keystone XL, “Some will say we have to make trade-offs and sacrifice our air quality for lower gas prices. But with this project, we would be sacrificing our air quality for higher gas prices.”

Key recommendations from the EPA letter include that the State Department should:

Consider alternative routes as required under NEPA. EPA raises again serious concern with running pipeline through Ogallala because of near surface water table and impacts of a spill.
Disclose data on what the chemical composition is of oil and diluents moving through pipeline. EPA notes serious concern about benzene and impacts on local communities in Michigan that were exposed when the Enbridge pipeline ruptured last summer, sending many residents to the hospital.
Consider harm to communities living near pipeline and to refineries, asking that much better measures be evaluated for reducing exposure and mitigating impact. EPA points out that communities in the Houston and Port Arthur area are likely to be exposed to disproportionate pollution from the refining of diluted bitumen transported in the pipeline and that these increased refinery emissions and their health impacts should be evaluated. EPA calls for hearings in these communities before the review is finalized.
Change the methodology for evaluating the life-cycle greenhouse gas impacts, which EPA believes are understated by 20 percent and to evaluate scenarios that will result in significant emissions (600 million to 1.15 billion tons of CO2), and evaluate opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas impacts from extraction to refineries.
Improve the analysis of damage to wetlands and propose mitigation for damage. EPA also asks for better information about impacts on migratory birds and other species and of mitigation measures to better protect them.

In closing, EPA restates its major concerns – the potential for groundwater impacts from spills, the impact of more refinery pollution, the greenhouse gases associated with extraction and the pipeline itself, and the lack of mitigation measures, especially in regard to potentially enormous greenhouse gas emissions. Probably most important to note, though, is EPA’s statement that State should take time to review these impacts because there is no rush – “The consideration of environmental impacts associated with constructing and operating this proposed pipeline is especially important given that current excess pipeline capacity for transporting oil sands crude to the United States will likely persist until after 2020, as noted in the SDEIS.”

This is a point that we have made over and over, and make again in our comments submitted today. The U.S. has tar sands pipeline overcapacity for years to come. The Obama Administration must tell the State Department to jettison its arbitrary deadline of the end of the year so that the requests by EPA and the public can be honored. That’s what the President promised at a Pennsylvania clean energy event when he touted his Administration’s science based review of the pipeline.

Now is the time to get on with that review in earnest. And it’s growing increasingly clear that it’s the President, not the State Department, that should be entrusted with this review and decision.