‘Allowing the Keystone pipeline to be built requires finding that doing so would be in our national interests. And our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.”
— U.S. President Barack Obama, Georgetown University, June 25.
What did President Obama mean by that? He meant he could go either way on it.
As a lawyer and former editor of the Harvard Law Review, he was trained to argue both sides of a case.
It also depends on what he considers to be in the “national interest” of the United States, and how he would define “significantly exacerbate” greenhouse gas emissions.
The one thing that did jump off the page was his reference that Keystone “would carry oil from Canadian tarsands.” The Canadian oilpatch has spent a fortune re-branding as the “oilsands,” and even the New York Times has finally adopted the nomenclature of a commodity that doesn’t stick. Not Obama and his White House speechwriters.
They shouldn’t have to get a call from the Canadian Embassy to learn how much the reference would have annoyed Ottawa. Stephen Harper, being from Calgary, wouldn’t have missed that.
For the rest, the only real news in Obama’s 47-minute speech, his bid in 2013 to fulfil environmental campaign promises made in 2008, was his promise to invoke the Clean Air Act of 1970 in implementing climate change policies. In other words, he intends to act through the executive branch, bypassing Congress.
In terms of the approval process, the U.S. State Department has already released an environmental impact study which concluded, as the Times reported, “that the net impact of the pipeline on the climate would be small, because even if was not built, the oil would still be extracted and sold in other markets.”
And on the same day as Obama’s speech, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences released a study which found that diluted bitumen was no riskier to transport than other kinds of oil.
For its part, in its front page story, The Wall Street Journal said Obama “would approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline later this year” provided his environmental stipulations were met and that his “conditional remark was meant, in part, to blunt criticism that approving an oil pipeline would be at odds with his climate policy.”
Which only underlines the point that Obama’s remarks on Keystone can be read either way.
On the environment, the opposition to Keystone isn’t about the pipeline — the only danger there is from a leak. It’s about the oilsands. But the Alberta oilsands account for only 0.16 per cent of all the GHG emissions in the world. For that matter, they account for 7.8 per cent of the emissions in Canada.
By comparison, the coal-fired electricity industry in the U.S. accounts for 40 times the GHG emissions of the oilsands. But good luck with the coal lobby, Mr. President. By the way, did you know Alberta was the first North American government to require industry to cut GHG emissions, or that it has put a price on carbon?
In terms of the U.S. national interest, the $7-billion Keystone project, from the Alberta border to the Gulf coast, would create thousands of jobs in the U.S., for welders, pipefitters and the like. Union jobs, a reliable constituency of Obama’s Democratic party. In terms of supply, Keystone would move 830,000 barrels a day to refineries, and the Americans would be getting it at a discount to the world price of as much as $35 a barrel. The oil discount costs Canada $28 billion a year in forgone export revenues.
And Canada is a reliable partner, a stable democracy, right on America’s doorstep, not oceans away. As outgoing U.S. Ambassador David Jacobson has noted: “Canada is the largest supplier of every form of energy to the United States.” Canada supplies the U.S. with 100 per cent of its imported electricity, 85 per cent of its imported natural gas, and 27 per cent of its oil imports — more than twice as much as Saudi Arabia.
Finally, in the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, the deal in the energy chapter was that we gave them security of supply in return for security of access. If Obama were to veto Keystone, he would be violating the spirit if not the letter of the FTA.
It would be a very bad day for Canada-U.S. relations.
L. Ian MacDonald is editor of Policy magazine.
