Keystone XL Pipeline: Veto a Coming

 

The new Republican Congress will consider in the next few days legislation to remove Presidential authority and impediments preventing the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. This construction project to bring Canadian tar sand oil into the United States for refining and use has been studied and examined for many years. I mean many years. If the pipeline is not built, the oil will be transported by other means and a good deal of it will be exported to Asia.

This is not a government project. It is a private endeavor needing government approvals. It is not like Solyndra, needing hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to be feasible and then still fail. The companies are big boys and they can make their decision based on the “market”. The fact is: this country will be using petroleum as a primary fuel for the next 50 years. Having a secure and reliable supply from friendly and neighborly Canada is in the national interst. 

The Obama government has done all it can to stop the project. Delays, studies, more permits, confusion with their climate policy agenda, right of ways, aquifer problems, litigation and more. The Administration has been less than candid (no surprise there) and has made one excuse after another.

Time is up and a majority in this Congress has had enough.

The White House has issued a veto threat and I have no doubt the measure, if passed, will be vetoed. Mr. Obama beholden to his anti-oil, anti-fossil fuels, anti-business, no growth environmental friends never, ever intended to allow the construction of the pipeline. Oh, there will be reasons given for the veto but hardly digestible. The fact remains, Mr. Obama could have given support to Keystone, could have push the approval process along, could sign the legislation. He simply for does not want it and he refuses to fess up about it.

This is what we have done to ourselves; this is the continuing consequences of 2012.