Keystone XL

Obama faces a momentous decision on the Keystone Pipeline System. It's his call to make and not Congress' since it in involves an international boundary. Climate-change experts like James Hansen are quite clear -- if we go ahead with large-scale production of oil from the tar sands in Alberta, which Keystone makes economically possible, our goose is cooked; there will be no way to avoid the planetary tipping point of a 2-degree-Celsius increase in global average temperature.

Bill McKibben's 350.org has been doing a lot of organizing around Keystone for a couple of years now. Yesterday there was a big rally at the Washington Monument to say no to the Keystone XL.

For an establishment perspective that definitely tilts toward the oil industry and Canada's Conservative government led by Alberta-centric Prime Minister Stephen Harper read today's article by John M. Broder, Clifford Krause and Ian Austen. But before you do that, check out Michael Klare's latest readable and informative piece on TomDispatch.com.

I've read Michael Klare's Resource Wars and Blood and Oil (I've got Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet but haven't read it yet); and I always read what he has posted on TomDispatch.com. The guy is usually right. He was right about Africa becoming a hot spot of Pentagon activity. And he was right about the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute, as well as the Spratly Islands dispute. So he's someone worth reading.

And what he says is that if Keystone XL is blocked it'll be a death blow to the Canadian tar sands industry. At the end of the Broder et al. story there is a quote from a Shell Canada official saying that it's not the only option. But it really is. According to Klare,

A presidential thumbs-down and resulting failure to build Keystone XL, however, could have lasting and severe consequences for tar-sands production. After all, no other export link is likely to be completed in the near-term. The other three most widely discussed options -- the Northern Gateway pipeline to Kitimat, British Columbia, an expansion of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline to Vancouver, British Columbia, and a plan to use existing, conventional-oil conduits to carry tar-sands oil across Quebec, Vermont, and New Hampshire to Portland, Maine -- already face intense opposition, with initial construction at best still years in the future.

The Northern Gateway project, proposed by Canadian pipeline company Enbridge, would stretch from Bruderheim in northern Alberta to Kitimat, a port on Charlotte Sound and the Pacific. If completed, it would allow the export of tar-sands oil to Asia, where Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper sees a significant future market (even though few Asian refineries could now process the stuff). But unlike oil-friendly Alberta, British Columbia has a strong pro-environmental bias and many senior provincial officials have expressed fierce opposition to the project. Moreover, under the country’s constitution, native peoples over whose land the pipeline would have to travel must be consulted on the project -- and most tribal communities are adamantly opposed to its construction.

Another proposed conduit -- an expansion of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline from Edmonton to Vancouver -- presents the same set of obstacles and, like the Northern Gateway project, has aroused strong opposition in Vancouver. 

This leaves the third option, a plan to pump tar-sands oil to Ontario and Quebec and then employ an existing pipeline now used for oil imports. It connects to a terminal in Casco Bay, near Portland, Maine, where the Albertan crude would begin the long trip by ship to those refineries on the Gulf Coast. Although no official action has yet been taken to allow the use of the U.S. conduit for this purpose, anti-pipeline protests have already erupted in Portland, including one on January 26th that attracted more than 1,400 people. 

With no other pipelines in the offing, tar sands producers are increasing their reliance on deliveries by rail. This is producing boom times for some long-haul freight carriers, but will never prove sufficient to move the millions of barrels in added daily output expected from projects now coming on line. 

The conclusion is obvious: without Keystone XL, the price of tar-sands oil will remain substantially lower than conventional oil (as well as unconventional oil extracted from shale formations in the United States), discouraging future investment and dimming the prospects for increased output. In other words, as Bill McKibben hopes, much of it will stay in the ground.

Obama has the Canadian government, the oil industry and the Building Trades unions on one side versus Climate scientists and the environmental movement on the other. The decision Obama makes will show if he plans on being a supra-historical figure in his second term. Based on his first term, one would have to say no; that he will side with industry. Obama rocks the boat only gently; he works well within the status quo, which is the globalized neoliberal "greed is good" race to the bottom, science be damned. But there is the possibility of an "Obama unchained" in his second term. He's a smart guy. He has to know, based on the science, that if he okays a pipeline for the dirtiest, most carbon-rich form of oil destined for refineries owned by the Bircher Koch brothers that he has made the wrong choice.