The New York
Times January
17, 2015 JOE NOCERA
Greg Rickford,
Canada's minister of natural resources, was in the United States most of this
past week, on a trip that didn't get much attention in the media with so much
bigger news swirling about. So let me fill you in.
Rickford spent
the first two days of his trip in Washington, where of course debate over the
controversial Keystone XL pipeline is underway in earnest in the new
Republican-led Senate. The Republican-led House, meanwhile, has already passed
a bill giving the go-ahead to the pipeline, which, if it's ever built, will
transport heavy crude from the tar sands of Alberta to American refineries in
the Gulf of Mexico. And of course President Obama has threatened to veto any
such bill, should one land on his desk.
In Washington,
Rickford met with his Obama administration counterpart, Ernest Moniz, the
secretary of energy. Although the Keystone pipeline was not on the agenda, the
two men talked about it anyway. Rickford paid a visit to Heidi Heitkamp, the
Democratic senator from North Dakota, who strongly supports the Keystone
pipeline. (In addition to the Alberta crude, the pipeline would transport shale
oil from North Dakota.)
He met with
State Department officials to get a Keystone update; because the pipeline would
cross the U.S.-Canada border, the department has to do a review, which it has
done several times, always coming down in favor of the project. In several
speeches, Rickford talked up the close energy relationship between the United
States and Canada, noting that Canada sends three million barrels per day to
America -- more than Venezuela and Saudi Arabia combined. He mentioned Canada's
new pipeline safety law. He said he thought the Keystone XL pipeline should be
approved, which is essentially what Canadian officials have been saying for the
past six years.
Then on
Wednesday, Rickford went to Texas for two days. This is the part of his trip
that really caught my attention. His main focus in Texas was on two new
Canadian-controlled pipelines that became operational in mid-December. One is
called the Flanagan South pipeline, which cost $2.8 billion. It covers nearly
600 miles, from Pontiac, Ill., to Cushing, Okla. The other pipeline, called the
Seaway Twin, runs an additional 500 miles, from Cushing to Freeport, Tex.,
where the refineries are. It cost $1.2 billion. Guess where some of the oil
that is going to run through those pipelines is coming from? Yep -- the tar
sands of Alberta.
If you are
wondering why the environmental community hasn't been chaining itself to the
White House fence to protest these two new pipelines, the way it has with
Keystone, the answer is that neither of these pipelines crosses the Canadian
border, so they don't require the same complicated approval process that
Keystone requires. (The Flanagan South line will connect with a pipeline that
already crosses the border.) More to the point, perhaps, they were never the
symbol that the high-profile Keystone XL became, so that even the approvals
they did require never aroused the same attention from environmentalists.
Yet these new
pipelines are going to be carrying some 200,000 barrels per day of the heavy
crude mined from the tar sands. True, that is only a third of what the Keystone
XL would be able to deliver, but it essentially helps double the amount of tar
sands oil that can be exported to the United States. In addition, there will be
expanded rail capacity for Alberta's oil, which is a far more dangerous way to
move it than a state-of-the-art pipeline.
The point is:
With or without Keystone, Canada's tar sands oil is coming to the United
States. One of the stated reasons that environmental activists wanted to
prevent Keystone from being built was that doing so would force Canada to stop mining
the oil. Without Keystone, it was said, Canada would have no means to export
it. But that has never been a particularly plausible argument. Even before the
opening of these two new pipelines, tar sands oil was coming to the United
States, primarily by rail. Indeed, the only thing that can slow it down now is
the rapid drop in the price of oil, which is likely to make expensive tar sands
crude unprofitable.
Even as the
Keystone debate reaches its current crescendo, all that is left, really, is the
symbolism. The Republican right claims that Keystone will create jobs. It
won't, not to any significant degree. The Democratic left says that the oil
Keystone will bring to the Gulf is so dirty, so carbon laden, that it will
wreak havoc on the climate. It won't do that either. If the president
ultimately decides not to approve Keystone, he will do so knowing full well
that he has not stopped the tar sands oil in any meaningful way.
To expect
another outcome is, well, a pipe dream. It always was.
