Keystone: The Courageous Decision Would Have Been to Decide -- MinnPost.com

Link here.

The Obama administration has now effectively delayed a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, which is designed to bring up to 700,000 barrels of Alberta oil-sands oil into the United States. As reported by John Broder of the New York Times, this continues an administration trend of postponing controversial energy decisions beyond the 2012 election. Previously, President Barack Obama delayed a review of the nation's smog standard until 2013, pushed back offshore oil-lease sales in the Arctic until at least 2015 and blocked new regulations for coal ash from power plants.

A more decisive and courageous decision would have been fair to everyone involved in the $7 billion Keystone XL project. It also would have been fair to the Canadian government, which is considering an alternative, the Northern Gateway pipeline to the Pacific Ocean terminal at Kitimat, British Columbia, with shipments to China and other Asian customers. In addition, Minnesota already gets oil-sands oil via the Alberta Clipper pipeline from Hardesty, Alberta.

The president could have announced a decision to reject Keystone XL based on his campaign promises to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and to focus on the threat of global warming.

Wow, I've said the same thing, and said it a long time ago: the President needs to make a decision. He is simply slow-rolling the oil industry.

The author of MinnPost said this:

The demand for increasing amounts of Alberta's oil sands oil is there. We already use a lot of it in MN via the Alberta Clipper Pipeline. Most of the cars on MN highways are running on the gas from that heavy oil. Our Pine Bend refinery is the largest heavy oil processing refinery in the U.S. A direct pipeline from Pine Bend to MSP supplies the jet fuel for all those planes taking off from points beyond.

There are other pipelines today which run south from the oil sands. Keystone XL is needed to handled future increases. If we punt, Canada will go west to supply Asia.

I don't follow the MinnPost.com blog. The reader who alerted me to this says the blog is left of center.  I wouldn't know. I didn't read the story linked above very closely. I've beat the story to death; folks know where I stand on it. The Keystone XL is dead; the President killed tens of thousands of jobs; he continues to slow-roll the oil industry.

Just so folks don't spend a lot of time replying, I generally don't post comments to op-ed pieces, unless they add something positive to the discussion.