Keystone Review will be Pointless without Climate Change Assessment

[CythSmal]

The U.S. environmental assessment of a new Keystone XL pipeline route from Canada will be meaningless unless it considers the effect mining of oil sands has on climate change.

The State Department may release within days the updated review of the path from Alberta to the Gulf Coast proposed by TransCanada Corp.

Environmentalists say producing oil from Alberta’s tar sands releases more carbon dioxide than conventional drilling, worsening global warming.

The review will be “a meaningless document unless it includes a serious review of the very serious climate impacts of the tar sands development the pipeline will trigger,” Trey Pollard, a spokesman for the Sierra Club, said in a statement.

“We want to see an analysis that follows through on the president’s promise to examine all the impacts of the Keystone pipeline and growing dependence on dirty tar sands,” Jeremy Symons, a vice president at the Reston, Virginia-based National Wildlife Federation, said in an interview. The group said yesterday the analysis may be released before Christmas.

In truth I had thought that the Keystone XL Pipeline was as good as dead. I thought the US were going to concentrate on shale gas and shale oil, and that Canada were planning on exporting most of their crude to Asia.

[The Hulk]

There seems to be far less hype around Keystone now, and far less pressure for Obama to approve it. Maybe this was his plan all along, to delay the decision until most people just got bored and forgot about it.

I would be surprised if Obama does approve it. The US will concentrate on domestic shale oil & gas production, and renewable energy.