Seven facts you should know about the Keystone Pipeline:

For starters, the bill approving the pipeline has been sitting on Obama's desk for a year, now. In fact, he was going to sign the bill into law until Hollywood mounted a televised campaign against the project.

The jobs it will create, whether 20,000 or 10,000 or 200,000 over the coming decade, are all paid for by private money. The pipeline will not cost the government and the American taxpayer one thin dime.

The pipeline is supported by unions which, in turn, support Mr. Obama. They are on record approving this project.

All six governors, whose states are "effected" by this pipeline, have given their approval, including the Republican governor of Nebraska, who initially opposed Keystone before it was re-routed within his state.

All the environmental reviews are complete and approved.

There is nothing, literally, standing in the way of this project except Obama's political confusion.

Finally, understand that the pipeline is more "shovel ready" than any of Obama's suggested infrastructure projects in his poorly written "American Jobs Acts."

Update: A reader of this blog, responded with a well informed retort to my article, here. I have included it in my article's "update," below. . . . . . . . . . . . .See a reader's objections at "Read more . . . ."

stripmallpaul said...

Environmental groups, citizens, and politicians have raised a number of concerns about the potential impacts of the Keystone XL extension. One concern is that the pipeline could pollute air and water supplies and harm migratory birds and other wildlife. It will cross the Sandhills in Nebraska, the large wetland ecosystem, and the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the largest reserves of fresh water in the world. The Ogallala Aquifer spans eight states, provides drinking water for two million people, and supports $20 billion in agriculture. Critics are concerned that a major leak could ruin drinking water and devastate the mid-western U.S. economy. Portions of the pipeline will also cross an active seismic zone that had a 4.3 magnitude earthquake as recently as 2002. Opponents claim that TransCanada applied to the U.S. government to use thinner steel and pump at higher pressures than normal.

Analysts believe that including the Alberta Clipper pipeline owned by TransCanada's competitor Enbridge, there is an extensive overcapacity of oil pipelines from Canada and after completion of the Keystone XL line oil pipelines to the U.S. will run nearly half-empty.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/opinion/tar-sands-and-the-carbon-numbers.html

The Canadian government insists that it has found ways to reduce emissions. But a new report from Canada’s environmental ministry shows how great the impact of the tar sands will be in the coming years, even with cleaner production methods.

It projects that Canada will double its current tar sands production over the next decade to more than 1.8 million barrels a day. That rate will mean cutting down some 740,000 acres of boreal forest — a natural carbon reservoir. Extracting oil from tar sands is also much more complicated than pumping conventional crude oil out of the ground. It requires steam-heating the sands to produce a petroleum slurry, then further dilution.

My only comment is this: the EPA is full of green wacko partisans, yet they approved this project more than a year ago, after 5 years of study. - blog editor