Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said one of the first acts of the new Senate will be to force President Barack Obama's hand on the Keystone XL pipeline.
The controversial project has been in the works since 2008. The current version involves a 875-mile pipeline that would run from Morgan, Mont., to Steele City, Neb. Building this link would allow 830,000 barrels of oil per day to move from the tar sands fields in Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Gulf Coast.
Supporters speak of improved energy security and jobs. But only 50 percent of the refined product will remain in the U.S., with the balance exported overseas. Opponents say the pipeline will increase greenhouse gas emissions and increase the risk of water pollution from spills.
The EPA report said "lifecycle GHG emissions from oil sands crude could be 81 percent greater then emissions from the average crude refined in the U.S."
The EPA further expressed concerns over pipeline spills. "The Enbridge spill of oil tars sands involved a 30-inch diameter pipeline, smaller than the 36-inch diameter pipeline for KXL, and 20,000 barrels of oil sands crude were released. In that spill, oil sands crude sank to the bottom of the Kalamazoo River, mixing with the river bottom's sediment and organic matter, making the oil difficult to find and recover."
Thune said, "We think the president ought to sign that into the law. His administration has done five environmental impact statements, all of which have said it would have a minimal impact on the environment, and his own State Department said it would support 42,000 jobs."
Politifact found that the number of permanent jobs from KXL is 50. James Coleman, a law and business professor at Calgary University told PolitiFact that while there were five documents, "they're all really draft and finalized versions of the same analysis."
On the key issue of greenhouse gas emissions, the State Department's 2013 draft was the project was "unlikely to significantly impact the rate of extraction in the oil sands" in Canada. In short, one way or the other, companies in Canada would continue to extract oil - meaning the rate of pollution was unlikely to grow simply due to the pipeline alone.
The Environmental Protection Agency tagged the State Department's draft from April 2013 with the label "Environmental objections - insufficient information." The EPA said the pipeline might have a bigger impact on greenhouse gas emissions than the State Department concluded.
The focus here was on how fast oil would come out of the Canadian fields. Pulling oil from the tar sands is costly and even more so when you tack transportation costs on top. The EPA felt that the State Department had not looked carefully enough at the impact of the pipeline if oil prices fell. The State Department's final analysis also included the caveat that the pipeline would have a minimal impact on tar sands extraction only if oil prices remained above $75 per barrel. When oil prices fall, the lower shipping costs that come with the pipeline matter a whole lot more to keeping the enterprise viable.
The EPA questioned the lack of the State Department's consideration of alternate routes for KXL, which are likely to reduce potential environmental impacts to groundwater resources. The State Department determined Keystone Corridor Alternatives were not to be reasonable alternatives primarily on the basis that these routes are longer than the proposed project's route. The EPA recommended that State "provide more detailed information as to why these alternatives were not considered reasonable or analyze these alternatives in more detail."
Chip Tuthill lives in Mancos. Websites used: www.politifact.com and www.epa.gov.