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FACT Checker  http://www.factcheck.org/2014/03/pipeline-primer/

How to sound smart about the Keystone pipeline. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0Nlyu6E6oE

Keystone Pipeline Controversy Explained https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-08Pyiwx3s

Ten Keystone Pipeline Factshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvo4078xSzQ

"Pipe Dreams" documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD5KSsFEA5c

CNN The Keystone Pipeline.... Explained https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTXqJoCxh7w

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After more than five years of claims and counter-claims about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, President Obama is expected to make his final decision soon. So we thought it was a good time to sift through the disinformation and lay out some basic facts.

Building the pipeline will create jobs in the U.S., but not as many as supporters have claimed, and only for a year or two. The U.S. State Department estimates that 42,100 jobs would be added during construction, but that only 50 workers would be required to operate the pipeline.

Oil from Canadian bitumen deposits - which the Keystone would carry from Alberta to the U.S. for refining - results in 14 percent to 20 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than oil typically consumed in the U.S. at present.

But that doesn't mean that stopping the pipeline would prevent Canadians from extracting their crude and getting it to market to be burned, either in the U.S. or other countries. "Such a change is not likely to occur," State concluded.

In fact, much of that oil is reaching the U.S. already - by rail - and more tank-car capacity is being added quickly. Canadians also are proposing two other pipelines to tanker ports on the Pacific coast, and a third project to nearly double the effective capacity of an existing line to the U.S.

Pipelines are dangerous, but tanker cars are more so. Rail accidents spilled more oil in the U.S. last year than in all the previous years on record combined. And in Canada, 47 people died in one fiery tanker-train disaster in Quebec last year.

The pipeline would be built by TransCanada Corp. and would run 1,179 miles from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Neb., where it would connect with existing pipelines to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The U.S. segment would be 875 miles long, running through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. The 36-inch diameter line could carry up to 830,000 barrels (nearly 35 million gallons) of oil per day.

Because it would cross the U.S.-Canadian border, it would require a finding by the Obama administration that building it is in the national interest. The State Department, after lengthy review, submitted its Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement on Jan. 31, and said it would receive public comments until March 7. No date has been announced for a final decision.

The debate over the project has pitted environmentalists - who hope to block the project on grounds that it would worsen global warming and result in hazardous oil spills - against the president's critics on the right - who say he should have approved it long ago to create jobs and lessen U.S. dependence on oil from less friendly countries.
Jobs
Any big construction project requires workers to build it. How many? The U.S. State Department's analysis says 3,900 would be employed directly if the job is done in one year, or 1,950 per year if work is spread over two. TransCanada Corp. puts the number higher, saying the project would support 9,000 construction jobs directly.

There would be additional, "indirect" work for companies supplying goods and services, including concrete, fuel, surveying, welding materials and earth-moving equipment required for the project, and "induced" jobs resulting from money spent by workers and suppliers, such as ranchers providing beef for restaurants and construction camps. Counting up everything, the State Department estimates a total of 42,100 jobs could be created. TransCanada has accepted the 42,100 figure for total employment.

Whatever the number, these jobs are temporary, lasting only for the year or two that it would take to complete the project. The number of permanent jobs is much lower. "The proposed Project would generate approximately 50 jobs during operations," according to State's analysis.

House Republicans are still claiming the project would create 120,000 jobs. But that's based on outdated information. The House Energy Committee's GOP majority website extrapolates from figures given by TransCanada two years ago - for a much longer pipeline than is now proposed.

That was before President Obama initially rejected the original Canada-to-Texas project pending changes in the route. Since then, TransCanada has completed a 485-mile segment of the original project - running from Cushing, Okla., to refineries in Texas - which did not require presidential approval because it did not cross an international border. Now named the " Gulf Coast Pipeline Project," construction began in August 2012 and was completed this year. It went into operation on Jan. 22.

The current Keystone XL project includes 875 miles within the U.S. And, as noted, even TransCanada says it would create about 42,000 temporary jobs, not 120,000.
Environment
Critics of the pipeline are fond of saying it would carry " the dirtiest oil on the planet, " and there is no question that the oil is significantly "dirtier" than most in the sense that it results in more greenhouse gas emissions.

It comes from Alberta and parts of Saskatchewan, in what the industry calls "oil sands" and environmentalist critics call " tar sands." By either name, they are vast deposits of bitumen - a form of petroleum so dense that at a temperature of 52 degrees Fahrenheit it is "hard as a hockey puck," according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. It must be heated or diluted to be made to flow through pipes.

The bitumen is found mixed with sand and clay. Extracting it requires a good deal of energy - either through open-pit mining from surface deposits or by injecting steam into deeper, "in situ" (in place) sites. Refining it into useful fuels also requires more energy - and hence more emissions - than lighter forms of petroleum.

How much "dirtier" is it? The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service surveyed published scientific literature on the subject, and those studies found variously that getting Canadian bitumen produced and processed into fuel produces between 70 percent and 110 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than the weighted average of transportation fuels now used in the U.S. That's what's called a "well-to-tank" figure, the measure preferred by critics.

However, once it is in the tank, gasoline or diesel fuel that comes from Canadian bitumen is no different than fuel from any other form of petroleum. And burning the fuel in car and truck engines produces a lot more emissions than producing it and getting it to the pump.

So over the entire "life cycle" of a fuel - from in the ground to out the tailpipe - burning a gallon of fuel from the Canadian oil results in 14 percent to 20 percent more greenhouse gas emissions, on average, than burning a gallon of currently available fuel, according to the CRS study. That's called a "well to wheel" figure. The State Department's final environmental report put the well-to-wheel figure at 17 percent - squarely in the middle of the published studies surveyed by CRS.

CRS estimated that oil flowing through the Keystone pipeline would result in an increase in U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases equivalent to adding somewhere between 770,800 and 4.3 million passenger vehicles. But whether that would mean any increase at all in global emissions "remains uncertain," CRS said. And the State Department said " such a change is not likely to occur."

State said Canadian oil will probably end up being produced and burned anyway, even if the Keystone is not built. It said new data and analysis indicate that " rail will likely be able to accommodate new production if new pipelines are delayed or not."

Last year the Environmental Protection Agency officially questioned a similar conclusion contained in an earlier draft of the report, and said State should "provide a more careful review of the market analysis" that supported it. State did so, conducting economic modeling of 16 different sets of supply-demand assumptions and pipeline constraints, which it said showed that " cross-border pipeline constraints have a limited impact on crude flows and prices."

And meanwhile, more and more Canadian oil is already coming to the U.S. in tanker cars, just as State predicted.
Alternatives
Railroad Tank Cars: A substantial amount of Canadian oil is already entering the U.S. by rail, in tank cars, and the amount carried this way is rising sharply. No White House approval is required.

Rail shipments have skyrocketed since the time the White House rejected the original Keystone route, when the shipments were less than 20,000 barrels per day. The State Department's final environmental report estimated that 180,000 barrels per day were already being transported by rail from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, amounting to nearly 22 percent of the volume that the Keystone could carry (830,000 barrels per day). And the industry is adding new rail capacity rapidly.

For example, on Dec. 20, plans for a new loading facility in Edmonton (Alberta's capital) were announced. It is projected to be in operation by the end of 2014, with an eventual capacity to load 250,000 barrels per day for shipment to North American refineries. Another new rail terminal is planned for Hardisty (where the Keystone pipeline would originate) with a capacity of 140,000 barrels per day, to begin operations early this year. The international information company IHS estimates that as much as 450,000 barrels per day could be moving by rail by the end of 2014, according to CNBC.

Other Pipelines: Besides the Keystone, three other pipeline projects are being proposed to carry Alberta crude oil to market. Two would carry it across the mountains of British Columbia to ports on Canada's Pacific coast, to be loaded on tankers and shipped mostly to China and other Asian markets (and with some going to California), while a third would nearly double the effective capacity of an existing line to the U.S.

Kinder Morgan proposes to nearly triple the capacity of its existing Trans Mountain Pipeline to carry an additional 690,000 barrels per day. The company filed its formal application with Canada's National Energy Board on Dec. 16, and says that if approved the expanded pipeline could be operational by late 2017. The project faces a long review, but the company says 73 percent of the expansion would be built on existing right-of-way.

Opinion in British Columbia is narrowly divided. A Jan. 22 poll by the Canadian polling company Insights West found that 48 percent said they favored the project, while 43 percent said they opposed it. The poll also showed that support has grown since another poll the previous year, when the pipeline proposal was in a preliminary phase. Insights West said that between the two polls, those favoring the project jumped by 10 percentage points, while those opposing it dropped by 14 points.

Enbridge Inc. proposes to construct an entirely new Northern Gateway pipeline to carry 525,000 barrels per day to the coast, and it has already cleared a major regulatory hurdle. A review panel of Canada's regulators recommended approval of the project on Dec. 19, finding that it would be "in the public interest" provided that Enbridge complied with 209 conditions, which Enbridge says it is "working hard" to meet. Canada's natural resources minister, Joe Oliver, says the government will make its final decision by mid-June.

A Jan. 25 poll conducted for a Canadian news agency found the country's public more likely to support the project (38 percent) than to oppose it (29 percent). And in British Columbia, a Jan. 5 survey by the polling company Ipsos showed 48 percent of British Columbia residents supported the project, while 32 percent opposed.

That could change, of course. A later poll commissioned by environmental groups found that 64 percent of British Columbia residents opposed "allowing crude oil supertankers through B.C.'s northern inside coastal waters" to load oil carried by the proposed pipeline. But the same poll found that 64 percent also said they "believe Enbridge will succeed in building its pipelines and tanker proposal," while only 12 percent thought it would fail.

Enbridge also proposed March 3 to lay new and larger pipe along its 46-year-old "Line 3" cross-border pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta, to Superior, Wisc. The company said this would have the effect of "restoring" the line's effective capacity to 760,000 barrels per day from its current operating limit of 390,000.

The company said this would not require a new presidential permit, prompting an objection from the Sierra Club. Enbridge said the $7 billion project would be the largest in its history, and that it hopes to have it completed by 2017.
Safety
Pipelines can be hazardous. An average of 97,376 barrels (4.1 million gallons) of petroleum and other "hazardous liquids" have been spilled each year in pipeline incidents over the last decade, according to the Department of Transportation's Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. These incidents have claimed an average of two lives per year, and resulted in more than $263 million in annual reported property damage as well.

Those figures include the most expensive onshore oil pipeline spill in U.S. history, caused when 30-inch pipe operated by Enbridge ruptured on July 26, 2010, near Marshall, Mich. That dumped more than 1 million gallons of Canadian diluted bitumen - the same material that would be carried in the proposed 36-inch Keystone pipeline - into the Kalamazoo River. Enbridge is still struggling to complete the cleanup, having failed to meet a Dec. 31 Environmental Protection Agency deadline for dredging remaining oil residue that settled on the bottom of the river. Although Enbridge initially put the spill at about 840,000 gallons, the EPA said last year that 1.15 million gallons had been recovered and 350,000 cubic yards of contaminated river sediment remained to be recovered. Enbridge said in August 2013 that it had spent more than $1 billion on the cleanup and remediation to date, and the figure continues to rise.

A spill from the Keystone could potentially have similar effects. The Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality, in its final evaluation report on the project, found that the properties of the diluted forms of bitumen that would flow through the state in the Keystone pipeline " are similar in many respects to other heavy sour crude oils." For what it's worth, TransCanada says it plans to make the Keystone " the safest pipeline ever constructed in the U.S., " adding more remote shut-off valves and inspections and burying the pipe more deeply than with other pipelines.

Rail transport is even more hazardous than pipelines, however. Last July, 47 people died in a single disaster when an unattended train including 72 tanker cars loaded with crude oil rolled downhill, exploded and burned in the Canadian town of Lac-Mégantic in Quebec province. Forty buildings were demolished, and an estimated 5.6 million liters (1.5 million gallons) of crude oil spilled or burned.

And that calamity is by no means an isolated incident.

The tempo of oil-train accidents has increased along with the sharp rise in tanker shipments, as has the amount of oil discharged. Soon after the Casselton spill, an investigative news report by the McClatchy news agency concluded, based on federal data, that last year more oil spilled in the U.S. from rail tank cars than in all the nearly 40 previous years on record combined.

The incidents continue. On Feb. 13, several cars of a train carrying heavy Canadian crude derailed in Western Pennsylvania. This time only a few thousand gallons leaked out, and there was no fire or explosion.

But later that month, on Feb. 26, a representative of the National Transportation Safety Board, Robert L. Sumwalt, told a congressional hearing that incidents such as the Casselton explosion have become an "increasingly commonplace story." He said continued use of tanker cars built to meet current federal standards poses "an unacceptable public risk." Meanwhile, the Association of American Railroads is pressing the federal government to impose " more rigorous standards for tank cars carrying flammable liquids, including asking for retrofitting tank cars to meet the higher standards or phasing those that cannot be made safer."

Based on relative safety records to date, the State Department estimated that an average of six deaths per year would result if the Keystone isn't built and the same amount of oil is shipped by rail instead. More than twice as much oil is likely to be spilled as well, State estimated.
Gasoline Prices
Some proponents have claimed the Keystone project would hold down gasoline prices for U.S. motorists, while foes have claimed that it would do the opposite, at least for Midwestern motorists. We find that neither claim is valid.

The State Department's analysis concluded that either way, the Keystone project would have " little impact on the prices that U.S. consumers pay for refined products such as gasoline." That's because Gulf Coast refineries that process heavy crude could continue to get it from Venezuela or the Middle East, as they do now, if they can't get it from Canada, the report said. And even if the Keystone isn't built, Canadian crude still " could reach U.S. and Canadian refineries by rail."

Other independent experts have said essentially the same thing. Curt Launer, a managing director at Deutsche Bank, has been quoted as saying, " Keystone wouldn't have a significant impact either way on overall North American energy prices." Another expert, Morningstar analyst David McColl, was quoted in the same article saying the Keystone would have "no material impact" on gasoline or diesel prices. And even TransCanada doesn't include lower gasoline prices in its list of the "economic benefits" it claims would result from building the pipeline.

Critics have argued, on the other hand, that Midwestern prices would actually increase, but there's little support for that idea.

The critics have pointed to an unusual market situation in which crude oil was selling in Oklahoma - as measured by the West Texas Intermediate benchmark price - at far below the world price as measured by the North Sea Brent benchmark. That was due in part to a pipeline bottleneck at Cushing, Okla., that allowed a glut of oil to build up from booming production in the Dakotas and Canada. In 2012, the price for WTI averaged $18 per barrel less than the average world price, according to the most recent report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But that "discount" fell below $4 per barrel in July 2013. It rebounded to $14 per barrel in January, and EIA projected that it would average $11 per barrel for all of 2014.

But even when the discount was greater, the lower price of crude oil in the Midwest never translated into consistently lower prices at the pump. A look at EIA's weekly figures shows that since the start of 2011 the average price of regular gasoline in the Midwest has been only 4 cents a gallon less than the national average, and has ranged anywhere from 20 cents a gallon less to 21 cents a gallon higher. Those who assumed that refiners were passing on their lower costs to consumers were simply wrong.

The State Department analysis came to the same conclusion, finding no correlation between wholesale gasoline prices in the Midwest and the average WTI discount. (See section 1.4.6.1 in the " Market Analysis " section.) In a footnote (number 10), the analysis commented that the cheaper Midwestern crude oil "benefited ... refiners," not motorists.

So, while building the pipeline would undoubtedly provide consumers with some measure of insurance against supply interruptions, as would any additional supply route, there's simply no evidence that it would have any noticeable effect on prices at the pump, either up or down.

Foes of the pipeline say the State Department report reflects a pro-industry bias because of an alleged conflict of interest by a firm hired to assist in its preparation. The Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth accused the consultant, Environmental Resources Management, of having ties to the oil industry and hiding a previous connection to TransCanada.

For example, "ERM and TransCanada have worked together at least since 2011 on another pipeline project in Alaska," Friends of the Earth stated in a July 10, 2013, news release. But ERM said that was wrong. "ERM's affiliates performed services on the Alaska Project only on behalf of a company other than TransCanada," the company said in a July 17, 2013, letter to the State Department.

Indeed, the State Department's Office of Inspector General investigated, and confirmed that work was done for URS Corp., which was hired by Exxon Mobil Corp. The Alaska project was a joint venture between TransCanada and ExxonMobil, but it was ExxonMobil that paid URS, which in turn paid ERM's affiliates. The inspector general found this didn't violate any conflict of interest rules, and cleared the department of any wrongdoing in a report released Feb. 26.

Another issue raised by critics is that ERM employees working on the Keystone evaluation had previously worked on projects for TransCanada, and one had formerly been a TransCanada employee. But the inspector general found that didn't violate any conflict-of-interest rules. The inspector general said the department had substantially followed all regulations for vetting consultants for conflicts of interest, and at times had been even "more rigorous" than required. Overall, the inspector general found that "the Department's conflict of interest review was effective and that the review's conclusions were reasonable."

The Sierra Club and other environmental groups vowed to fight on regardless of the OIG report. On March 3, several hundred people were arrested in student-led protests in Washington, D.C., where some secured themselves to the White House fence with plastic zip ties.
- by Brooks Jackson
U.S. Department of State. " Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone XL Project. " 31 Jan 2014.

" Keystone XL Pipeline - Overall route map. " TransCanada Corp. website. Accessed 7 Mar 2014.

" Jobs and Economic Benefits; Keystone XL Means Jobs. " TransCanada Corp. website. Accessed 7 Mar 2014.

" Keystone XL: #TimeToBuild. " U.S. Congress; House Energy and Commerce Committee, Republican majority website. Accessed 7 Mar 2014.

" Media Advisory - TransCanada Releases Detailed Keystone XL Job Creation Data." TransCanada Corp. news release. 10 Jan 2012.

" Obama rejects Keystone oil pipeline. " NBC News. 18 Jan 2012.

" Gulf Coast Pipeline Project. " TransCanada Corp. website. Accessed 7 Mar 2014.

Transportation Board of Canada. " Railway Investigation R13E0142: Train derailment and fire in Gainford, Alberta. " Website accessed 7 Mar 2014.

" Stopping the Keystone XL Pipeline. " National Resources Defense Council website. Accessed 7 Mar 2014.

" What Are Oil Sands? " Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers website. Accessed 7 Mar 2014.

" What are the Tar Sands? " Rainforest Action Network website. Accessed 7 Mar 2014.

" Recovering the Oil; Oil Sands Today. " Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers website. Accessed 7 Mar 2014.

Lattanzio, Richard K. " Canadian Oil Sands: Life-Cycle Assessments of Greenhouse Gas Emissions." Congressional Research Service. 15 Mar 2013.

Giles, Cynthia. Letter to U.S. Department of State officials from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency commenting on Keystone XL project review. 22 Apr 2013.

Lamphier,Gary. " Kinder Morgan, Imperial announce $270M rail terminal for Strathcona County. " Edmonton [Alberta] Journal. 20 Dec 2013.

" Gibson Energy Announces Hardisty Rail Terminal To Transport Crude (UPDATE). " Huffington Post. 7 Aug 2013.

Domm, Patti. " Canadian oil rides south even without Keystone pipeline." CNBC. 4 Nov 2013.

Kinder-Morgan Canada. " Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project. " Company website. accessed 7 Mar 2014.

Williams, Nia. " UPDATE 2-Kinder Morgan applies to expand Trans Mountain pipeline. " Reuters. 16 Dec 2013.

Insights West. " Kinder Morgan Expansion Still Splits Views in British Columbia." 22 Jan 2014.

Enbridge Inc. " Project at a glance - Northern Gateway. " Company website. accessed 7 Mar 2014.

" Northern Gateway pipeline decision expected by mid-June." Reuters. 25 Feb 2014.

Government of Canada: Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline Project - Joint Review Panel. " Joint Review Panel recommends approving the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project. " news release. 19 Dec 2013.

Proussalidis, Daniel. " Northern Gateway backers have upper hand: Poll. " Toronto Sun. 25 Jan 2014.

Kaufmann, By Bill. " B.C. residents favour Northern Gateway pipeline: Poll. " Toronto Sun. 5 Jan 2014.

Justaston Market Intelligence, Vancouver BC. " Oil Tanker Traffic in BC; The BC Outlook Omnibus: A Survey of British Columbia Residents. " Poll conducted for the Dogwood Initiative. Jan 2014.

Enbridge Inc. " Enbridge to Undertake $7 Billion Mainline Replacement Program. " News release. 3 Mar 2014.

" Edited Transcript: Enbridge Inc Conference Call to Discuss $7 Billion Mainline Replacement Program. " Thompson Reuters. 4 Mar 2014.

Jones, Jeffrey. " Enbridge bypasses U.S. permit process for $7-billion pipeline upgrade. " Toronto Globe and Mail. 4 Mar 2014.

Hayes, Doug. " Statement on Enbridge Line 3 Tar Sands Pipeline Expansion Plan." Sierra Club news release. 4 Mar 2014.

U.S. Department of Transportation:Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. " All Reported Pipeline Incidents:Hazardous Liquid. " Online database accessed 5 Mar 2014.

McGowan, Elizabeth and Lisa Song. " ' Keystone Kops' Bungling Led to Costliest U.S. Pipeline Spill " Bloomberg News. 24 Jul 2012.

Smith, Lindsay. " Enbridge unveils new plans to dredge oily sediment from Kalamazoo River. " Michigan Radio. 13 Feb 2014.

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Linnitt, Carol. " Official Price of the Enbridge Kalamazoo Spill, A Whopping $1,039,000,000. " DeSmog Canada. 26 Aug 2013.

Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality. "Nebraska's Keystone XL Pipeline Evaluation: Final Evaluation Report. " 4 Jan 2014.

" Keystone XL will be the safest pipeline ever constructed in the United States. " TransCanada Corporation website. Accessed 7 Mar 2014.

Giovannetti, Justin and Grant Robertson and Jacquie McNish " As Lac-Mégantic death toll reaches 47, safety board calls for immediate rail-safety changes. " Toronto Globe and Mail. 19 Jul 2013.

Beaudin,Monique ." Lac-Mégantic oil spill even worse than first feared, investigation shows. " Montreal Gazette. 22 Oct 2013.

Commisso, Christina. " Train derailment fire will have to burn itself out before residents can go home." CT News. 19 Oct 2013.

Salz,Allison. " Evacuation lifted after train derailment in Gainford, Alberta. " Edmonton Sun. 23 Oct 2013.

Detrhage, Stephen. " Flyover by Hurricane Creekkeeper shows extent of damage in Aliceville train derailment and oil spill (photos). " Alabama Media Group. 20 Nov 2013.

Silva, Daniella. " Mile-long train carrying crude oil derails, explodes in North Dakota. " NBC News. 30 Dec 2013.

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Tate, Curtis. " More oil spilled from trains in 2013 than in previous 4 decades, federal data show. " McClatchy Washington Bureau. 20 Jan 2014.

Gibbons, Robert and Elizabeth Diltz. " Train carrying Canadian oil derails, leaks in Pennsylvania. " Reuters. 13 Feb 2014.

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" GOP says Keystone XL would lower gas price. " UPI. 21 Feb 2013.

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Buford, Talia. " Hundreds arrested at White House Keystone protest. " Politico. 2 Mar 2014.

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After more than five years of claims and counter-claims about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, President Obama is expected to make his final decision soon. So we thought it was a good time to sift through the disinformation and lay out some basic facts.

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http://consumerenergyalliance.org/about/

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/questions/pt_survey_questions/january_2017/questions_keystone_xl_pipline_january_25_26_2017

http://www.targoz.com/market-matters-blog/americans-support-fracking-and-the-keystone-pipeline.html

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2012/0309/Inside-the-Keystone-pipeline-How-much-would-it-really-help-US-consumers

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WASHINGTON, D.C. - Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA) today commended President Donald Trump for signing a pair of Executive Orders that will allow the construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines to move forward, both of which will safely deliver the resources U.S. families and businesses need to drive down costs.

In the case of the Keystone XL pipeline, today's Executive Orders overturn the Obama administration's decision to deny a U.S. State Department permit required to allow the pipeline to cross the U.S.-Canadian border. For the Dakota Access Pipeline, President Trump overturned several Obama-era regulatory procedural measures that had resulted in unnecessary project delays and cost increases.

CEA President David Holt made the following statement after President Trump issued these Executive Orders:

"CEA has strongly supported both the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines for many years and we enthusiastically applaud President Trump's decision today to move ahead with these long-delayed projects.

"Critical infrastructure projects like Keystone XL and Dakota Access will bring much-needed crude oil to markets, which will help create the fuel, power, and products that Americans use every day. Everyone - families, farmers, manufacturers, distributors and small businesses - will benefit from the decision to greenlight a pair of pipelines that will help cash-strapped families lower costs, especially the tens of millions living on a fixed income or below the poverty line. These pipelines will create both immediate jobs and long-term economic opportunities for Americans across the nation, helping to fulfill one of President Trump's main campaign promises to create more U.S. jobs.

"But America needs even more pipelines to move forward. As part of CEA's Pipelines for America campaign, CEA recently released a report showing how failing to construct vital oil and natural gas pipelines, which deliver fuel and electricity to our homes and businesses, will result in a 31 percent shortfall in U.S. electricity capacity by 2030 - which, in turn, would raise energy prices, kill jobs and harm those of us living on fixed incomes.

"CEA urges the Trump administration to continue what it started today with its Keystone XL and Dakota Access decisions and continue efforts to streamline permitting of pipelines to create jobs and spur economic growth."

To review a copy of the CEA pipeline report, titled "Families, Communities and Finances: The Consequences of Denying Critical Pipeline Infrastructure," click here.

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Consumer Energy Alliance Applauds Trump Administration Pipeline Decisions - Consumer Energy Alliance

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WASHINGTON, D . C . - Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA) today commended President Donald Trump for signing a pair of Executive Orders that will allow the construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines to move forward, both of which will safely deliver the resources U.S.

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https://www.nrdc.org/media/2015/150211

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20110826/james-hansen-nasa-climate-change-scientist-keystone-xl-oil-sands-pipeline-protests-mckibben-white-house

http://www.npr.org/2014/02/21/280528523/scientist-switches-position-now-supports-keystone-xl-pipeline

http://www.ecowatch.com/bill-nye-depressed-by-tar-sands-extraordinary-exploitation-of-environm-1882094889.html

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WASHINGTON (February 11, 2015) - More than 90 leading scientists and economists today called on President Obama to reject the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, once and for all. They did so in a in a letter that comes as Congress prepares to send the president a bill forcing the pipeline's approval that he has already promised to veto.

The letter, sent to Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, urges them to reject the Keystone XL project on grounds that it will exacerbate climate change by unlocking massive development of tar sands, the dirtiest oil on the planet. Among those signing are a Nobel Prize winner in economics, a Nobel Prize winner in physics and lead authors of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports.

The scientists and economists, many of whom sent a similar letter last year, noted that the Environmental Protection Agency recently underscored their argument against approving the pipeline. EPA said in comments submitted on February 2nd to the State Department that its own environmental analysis shows that the "development of oil sands crude represents a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions."

"Once again, we strongly urge you to reject the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline as a project that will contribute to climate change at a time when we should be doing all we can to put clean energy alternatives in place," the scientists and economists write. "As you both have made clear, climate change is a very serious problem. We must address climate change by decarbonizing our energy supply. A critical first step is to stop making climate change worse by tapping into disproportionately carbon-intensive energy sources like tar sands bitumen.

"The Keystone XL pipeline will drive expansion of the energy-intensive strip-mining and drilling of tar sands from under Canada's Boreal forest, increasing global carbon emissions. Keystone XL is a step in the wrong direction."

The full text of the letter follows:

February 11, 2015

Dear President Obama and Secretary Kerry,

As scientists and economists, we are concerned about climate change and its impacts. In April, 2014, we sent you a similar letter expressing our concerns about climate change and the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Once again, we strongly urge you to reject the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline as a project that will contribute to climate change at a time when we should be doing all we can to put clean energy alternatives in place.

As you both have made clear, climate change is a very serious problem. We must address climate change by decarbonizing our energy supply. A critical first step is to stop making climate change worse by tapping into disproportionately carbon-intensive energy sources like tar sands bitumen. The Keystone XL pipeline will drive expansion of the energy-intensive strip-mining and drilling of tar sands from under Canada's Boreal forest, increasing global carbon emissions. Keystone XL is a step in the wrong direction.

President Obama, you said in your speech in Georgetown in 2013 that "allowing the Keystone pipeline to be built requires a finding that doing so would be in our nation's interest. And our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution." Since then we have heard your strong words on the threat of climate change, culminating in your State of the Union speech in which you said, "...no challenge - no challenge - poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change."

We could not agree more. And now more than ever, evidence shows that Keystone XL will significantly contribute to climate change. Fuels produced from tar sands result in more greenhouse gas emissions over their lifecycle than fuels produced from conventional oil, including heavy crudes processed in some Gulf Coast refineries. The Environmental Protection Agency observed in comments to the State Department, "compared to reference crudes, development of oil sands crude represents a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions." As the main pathway for tar sands to reach overseas markets, the Keystone XL pipeline would cause a sizeable expansion of tar sands production and also an increase in the related greenhouse gas pollution.

The State Department review confirmed this analysis under the scenario that best meets the reality of the opposition to alternative pipeline proposals and the higher costs of other ways of transporting diluted bitumen such as rail. The review found:

"The total lifecycle emissions associated with production, refining, and combustion of 830,000 bpd of oil sands crude oil is approximately 147 to 168 MMTCO2e per year. The annual lifecycle GHG emissions from 830,000 bpd of the four reference crudes examined in this section are estimated to be 124 to 159 MMTCO2e. The range of incremental GHG emissions for crude oil that would be transported by the proposed Project is estimated to be 1.3 to 27.4 MMTCO2e annually."

To put these numbers into perspective, the potential incremental annual emissions of 27.4 MMTCO2e is more than the emissions that seven coal-fired power plants emit in one year. And over the 50-year expected lifespan of the pipeline, the total emissions from Keystone XL could amount to as much as 8.4 billion metric tons CO2e. These are emissions that can and should be avoided with a transition to clean energy.

The contribution of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline to climate change is real and important, especially given the commitment of the United States and other world leaders to stay within two degrees Celsius of global warming. We trust that when the State Department reviews the comments of other agencies as well as citizen comments that it will move away from the model it chose to generate "most likely" scenarios, a model that uses business-as-usual energy scenarios that would lead to a catastrophic six degrees Celsius rise in global warming. Rejecting Keystone XL is necessary for the United States to be consistent with its climate commitments. Six degrees Celsius of global warming has no place in a sound climate plan.

Secretary Kerry, in your speech in Jakarta, you said, "The science of climate change is leaping out at us like a scene from a 3D movie - warning us - compelling us to act." Rejecting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is a critical decision, showing we can act, and would be based on sound science.

As the international community prepares to negotiate a new climate agreement in Paris later this year, the world is looking to the United States to lead through strong climate action at home. Now is the time to reject.

John Abraham, Ph.D.

Professor of Engineering

University of St. Thomas
David Ackerly, Ph.D.
Professor

University of California, Berkeley
Rev. Michael Agliardo, SJ, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor

Department of Sociology

Loyola University Chicago
Philip W. Anderson, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor

Nobel Laureate Physics 1977

Princeton University
Tim Arnold, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist

Met Office Hadley Center
Kenneth J. Arrow, Ph.D.
Nobel Prize (Economics 1972)

Professor Emeritus of Economics and of Management

Stanford University
Roger Bales, Ph.D.
Professor of Engineering

& Director

Sierra Nevada Research Institute

University of California, Merced
Paul H. Beckwith
Part-Time Professor, Climatology/Meteorology

Department of Geography

University of Ottawa
Anthony Bernhardt, Ph.D.
Physicist (retired)

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Damian C. Brady, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Marine Science

Darling Marine Center

University of Maine
Gordon Bromley, Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor

School of Earth and Climate Sciences/Climate Change Institute

University of Maine
Gary Brouhard, Ph.D.
Associate Professor

Department of Biology

McGill University
Ken Caldeira, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist

Department of Global Ecology

Carnegie Institution for Science
Grant Cameron, Ph.D.
Data Manager, Coastal Data Information Program (CDIP)

Scripps Institution of Oceanography

University of California, San Diego
Shelagh D. Campbell, Ph.D.
Professor of Biological Sciences

University of Alberta
Kai M. A. Chan, Ph.D.
Associate Professor & Tier 2 Canada Research Chair Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services

Graduate Advisor, RMES Institute for Resources, Environment & Sustainability

University of British Columbia
Eugene Cordero, Ph.D.
Professor

Department of Meteorology and Climate Science

San Jose State University
Rosemary Cornell, Ph.D.
Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry

Simon Fraser University
Gretchen C. Daily, Ph.D.
Bing Professor of Environmental Science

Stanford University
Miriam Diamond, Ph.D.
Professor

Department of Earth Sciences

University of Toronto
Lawrence M. Dill, Ph.D., FRSC
Professor Emeritus

Department of Biological Sciences

Simon Fraser University
Daniel Dixon, Ph.D.
University Sustainability Coordinator

& Research Assistant Professor, Climate Change Institute

University of Maine
Simon Donner, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Climatology

University of British Columbia
Roland Droitsch, Ph.D.
President

KM21 Associates
Steve Easterbrook, Ph.D.
Professor of Computer Science

University of Toronto
Anne Ehrlich, Ph.D.
Senior Research Scientist Emerita

Center for Conservation Biology

Biology Department

Stanford University
T. Todd Elvins, Ph.D.
Vice President

Pacific Integrated Energy, Inc.
David Foster, Ph.D.
Director

Harvard Forest

Harvard University
Alejandro Frid, Ph.D.
Science Coordinator/Ecologist

Central Coast Indigenous Resource Alliance
Jed Fuhrman, Ph.D.
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

& McCulloch-Crosby Chair of Marine Biology

University of Southern California
Eric Galbraith, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor

Department of Earth and Planetary Science

McGill University, Montreal Canada
Geoffrey Gearheart, Ph.D.
Scientist

Center for Marine Biodiversity and Biomedicine

Scripps Institution of Oceanography

University of California, San Diego
John R. Glover, Ph.D.
Professor of Biochemistry

University of Toronto
Gary Griggs, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences

Director, Institute of Marine Sciences

University of California, Santa Cruz
Steven Hackett, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair, Economics

Humboldt State University

Arcata, CA
Joshua B. Halpern, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry

Howard University
Gordon Hamilton, Ph.D.
Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences

University of Maine
Alexandra Hangsterfer
Geological Collections Manager

Scripps Institution of Oceanography

University of California, San Diego
James Hansen, Ph.D.
Director

Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions Program

Columbia University Earth Institute
John Harte, Ph.D.
Professor of Ecosystem Sciences

University of California, Berkeley
H. Criss Hartzell, Ph.D.
Professor

Emory University School of Medicine
Danny Harvey, Ph.D.
Professor

Department of Geography

University of Toronto
Karen Holl, Ph.D.
Professor of Environmental Studies

University of California, Santa Cruz
Roger LeB. Hooke, Ph.D.
Research Professor

Department of Geological Sciences

& Climate Change Institute

University of Maine
Robert Howarth, Ph.D.
The David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology & Environmental Biology

Cornell University
Jonathan Isham, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor of Economics

Middlebury College
Mark Jaccard, Ph.D.
University Professor

School of Resource and Environmental Management

Simon Fraser University
Louise E. Jackson, Ph.D.
Professor

University of California, Davis
Pete Jumars, Ph.D.
Professor of Marine Sciences

Darling Marine Center

University of Maine
David Keith, Ph.D.
Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics

School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) & Professor of Public Policy

Kennedy School of Government

Harvard University
Jeremy T. Kerr, Ph.D.
University Research Chair in Macroecology and Conservation

& Professor of Biology

University of Ottawa, Canada
Keith W. Kisselle, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Biology & Environmental Science and Academic Chair

Center for Environmental Studies

Austin College
Janet E. Kübler, Ph.D.
Senior Research Scientist

California State University at Northridge
Sherman Lewis, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus of Political Science

California State University Hayward
Michael E. Loik, Ph.D.
Associate Professor

Department of Environmental Studies

University of California, Santa Cruz
Michael C. MacCracken, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs

Climate Institute
Scott A. Mandia
Professor and Assistant Chair

Department of Physical Sciences

Suffolk County Community College
Michael Mann, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor of Meteorology & Director of Earth System Science Center

Penn State University
Damon Matthews, Ph.D.
Associate Professor

Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
James J. McCarthy, Ph.D.
Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography

Harvard University
Susan K. McConnell, Ph.D.
Susan B. Ford Professor & HHMI Professor

Dunlevie Family University Fellow

Department of Biology

Stanford University
Dominick Mendola, Ph.D.
Senior Development Engineer

Scripps Institution of Oceanography

University of California, San Diego
Faisal Moola, Ph.D.
Director General

Ontario and Northern Canada

David Suzuki Foundation

& Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Forestry

University of Toronto
Jens Mühle, Dr. rer. nat.
Associate Project Scientist

Scripps Institution of Oceanography

University of California, San Diego
Dustin Mulvaney, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Sustainable Energy Resources

Department of Environmental Studies

San Jose State University
Bill Nye
Science Educator
Richard B. Norgaard, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus of Energy and Resources

University of California, Berkeley
Gretchen North, Ph.D.
Professor of Biology

Occidental College
Dana Nuccitelli
Environmental Scientist

Tetra Tech, Inc.

Michael Oppenheimer, Ph.D.

Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs

Princeton University
Michael Oppenheimer, Ph.D.
Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs

Princeton University
Wendy J. Palen, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Biology

Simon Fraser University
Edward A. Parson, Ph.D.
Dan and Rae Emmett Professor of Environmental Law

& Faculty Co-Director, Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment

UCLA School of Law
Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, Ph.D.
Louis Block Professor in the Geophysical Sciences

The University of Chicago
Richard Plevin, Ph.D.
Research Scientist

Institute of Transportation Studies

University of California, Davis
John Pollack
Meteorologist and National Weather Service forecaster (retired)
Jessica Dawn Pratt, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor

Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

University of California at Irvine
Lynne M. Quarmby, Ph.D.
Professor & Chair

Molecular Biology and Biochemistry

Simon Fraser University
Alan Robock, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor of Climatology

Rutgers University
R. Cotton Rockwood
Center for Marine Biodiversity & Conservation

Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Thomas Roush, MD
NRDC Board Trustee
Maureen E. Ryan, Ph.D.
Research Associate

Simon Fraser University
Anne K. Salomon, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor

School of Resource and Environmental Management

Simon Fraser University
Benjamin D. Santer, Ph.D.
Atmospheric Scientist

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

& Member

U.S. National Academy of Sciences
Peter C. Schulze, Ph.D.
Professor of Biology and Environmental Science

& Director, Center for Environmental Studies

Austin College
Peter Schwartz, Ph.D.
Associate Professor

Department of Physics

California Polytechnic State University
Jason Scorse, Ph.D.
Associate Professor

Monterrey Institute of International Studies

Middlebury College
Leonard S. Sklar, Ph.D.
Professor

Department of Earth & Climate Sciences

San Francisco State University
Richard C. J. Somerville, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor Emeritus

Scripps Institution of Oceanography

University of California, San Diego
Brandon M. Stephens
Graduate Student Researcher

Scripps Institution of Oceanography

University of California, San Diego
John M.R. Stone, Ph.D.
Adjunct Professor

Carleton University
David Suzuki, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor

Sustainable Development Research Institute

University of British Columbia
Jennifer Taylor, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor

University of California, San Diego
Till Wagner, Ph.D.
Scientist

Scripps Institution of Oceanography

University of California, San Diego
Anthony LeRoy Westerling, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering and Geography

University of California, Merced
Kirsten Zickfeld, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor

Simon Fraser University

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Leading Scientists, Economists Urge Rejection of Keystone XL Pipeline

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WASHINGTON (February 11, 2015) - More than 90 leading scientists and economists today called on President Obama to reject the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, once and for all. They did so in a in a letter that comes...

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Environmental and Celebrity Documentary 

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Environmental and Celebrity Documentary 

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'Pipe Dreams'- The Keystone XL Documentary Narrated by Daryl Hannah

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This award winning documentary explores the implications of one of today's most controversial issues - the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Pipe Dreams is a new 40-minute documentary by Leslie Iwerks on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

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http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21715734-one-his-first-executive-actions-president-throws-down-gauntlet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awbM6595b7o

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President Trump signed a series of executive memorandums on Tuesday to revive the Dakota Access pipeline. The measures are a reversal from President Obama's rejection of the proposed 1,179-mile pipeline. Credit Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times

WASHINGTON - President Trump sharply changed the federal government's approach to the environment on Tuesday as he cleared the way for two major oil pipelines that had been blocked, and set in motion a plan to curb regulations that slow other building projects.

In his latest moves to dismantle the legacy of his predecessor, Mr. Trump resurrected the Keystone XL pipeline that had stirred years of debate, and expedited another pipeline in the Dakotas that had become a major flash point for Native Americans. He also signed a directive ordering an end to protracted environmental reviews.

"I am, to a large extent, an environmentalist, I believe in it," Mr. Trump said during a meeting with auto industry executives. "But it's out of control, and we're going to make it a very short process. And we're going to either give you your permits, or we're not going to give you your permits. But you're going to know very quickly. And generally speaking, we're going to be giving you your permits."

The decisions expanded an effort to unravel much of the policy structure left by former President Barack Obama, who made fighting climate change a central priority. Just a day earlier, Mr. Trump formally abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an ambitious 12-nation trade pact negotiated by Mr. Obama.

In his opening days in office, Mr. Trump has also modified or reversed Mr. Obama's policies on health care, abortion and housing while ordering a freeze of any pending regulations left behind by the former administration.

The pipelines were more about symbol than substance but generated enormous passion on both sides of the debate. Mr. Obama rejected the proposed Keystone pipeline in 2015, arguing that it would undercut American leadership in curbing the reliance on carbon energy. The Army sidetracked the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota last month in the waning days of the Obama administration.

Environmental activists quickly denounced Mr. Trump's decisions. "Donald Trump has been in office for four days, and he's already proving to be the dangerous threat to our climate we feared he would be," said Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club.

Mr. Trump made clear on the campaign trail that he saw Mr. Obama's environmental policies as a threat to the economy and dismissed climate change as a hoax perpetrated by China. Myron Ebell, a climate change denier who headed Mr. Trump's Environmental Protection Agency transition team, has drafted a 50-page blueprint for how he could eliminate Mr. Obama's climate change policies. "It is designed to implement all of the president's campaign trail promises - every single one," Mr. Ebell said this week in an interview.

Mr. Trump's biggest target may be emission rules that would force the closing of hundreds of coal-fired power plants meant to be replaced by wind and solar power. But they are caught up in court battles that could run for months or years.

By contrast, he could more quickly soften Mr. Obama's rules requiring tougher vehicle emission standards. Mr. Trump met on Tuesday with executives of major American automakers, who complained that before leaving office, Mr. Obama finalized an ambitious E.P.A. rule requiring that vehicles average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2026. Mr. Trump said he would help with burdensome regulations, but offered no specifics.

Mr. Trump could lift a moratorium instituted last year by Mr. Obama on new coal mining leases on public lands. As soon as next month, the Republican-led Congress may pass legislation undoing Mr. Obama's regulations on the practice of mountaintop-removal coal mining and on leaks of planet-warming methane emissions from oil and gas drilling rigs.

In the meantime, the Keystone and Dakota pipelines provided Mr. Trump with visible ways to demonstrate action. As proposed by TransCanada, an Alberta firm, Keystone would carry 800,000 barrels a day from the Canadian oil sands to the Gulf Coast. Republicans and some Democrats said that it would create jobs and expand energy resources, while environmentalists said it would encourage a form of oil extraction that produces more gases that warm the planet than normal petroleum.

Studies showed that the pipeline would not have a momentous effect on jobs or the environment, but both sides made it into a symbolic test case. The State Department estimated that Keystone would support 42,000 temporary jobs for two years - about 3,900 of them in construction and the rest through indirect support, like food service - but only 35 permanent jobs. Similarly, the government concluded that Keystone's carbon emissions would equal less than 1 percent of the total greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.

"Keystone has never been a significant issue from an environmental point of view in substance, only in symbol," said David L. Goldwyn, an energy market analyst and a former head of the State Department's energy bureau in the Obama administration.

But it was a symbol Mr. Trump found important enough to seize on early in his presidency. He signed an executive memorandum inviting TransCanada "to promptly resubmit its application to the Department of State for a presidential permit" for the pipeline, although the document did not guarantee approval.

The president told reporters he would "renegotiate some of the terms" - including possibly an insistence that the pipeline be built with American steel - but left little doubt that he wanted it approved. "We'll see if we can get that pipeline built," he said. "A lot of jobs."

In a statement, TransCanada accepted his invitation to seek permission again. "We are currently preparing the application and intend to do so," the company said, vowing that it would create jobs and still protect waterways and other sensitive resources.

The Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota became the focus of protests when the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe objected to its construction less than a mile from its reservation. The tribe and its allies won victory last month when the Army Corps of Engineers announced that it would look for alternative routes for the $3.7 billion pipeline instead of allowing it to be drilled under a dammed section of the Missouri River.

Mr. Trump signed an executive memorandum directing the Army "to review and approve in an expedited manner" the pipeline, "to the extent permitted by law and as warranted." In his session with reporters, he added, "Again, subject to terms and conditions to be negotiated by us."

Mr. Trump owned stock in Energy Transfer Partners, the company that is building the Dakota Access pipeline, according to his most recent filing with the Federal Election Commission. Last month, a spokesman for Mr. Trump said he sold all of his stock in June, but there is no way of verifying that sale, and Mr. Trump has not provided documentation of it.

Critics vowed to keep resisting the projects. Jan Hasselman, a lawyer for Earthjustice, an environmental law group representing the tribe, said Mr. Trump was discarding the findings of a review. "They're just ignoring the problems that the government has already found," he said, "and that is the kind of thing that courts need to review very closely."

In Canada, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau welcomed Mr. Trump's decision. "We have been supportive of this since the day we were sworn into government," Jim Carr, the natural resources minister, told reporters. Mr. Carr said the American reversal will lead "to a deepening of the relationship across the border."

In addition to the Keystone and Dakota directives, Mr. Trump signed three others intended to ease the way for businesses and to promote American manufacturing. One instructed the Commerce Department to develop a plan to ensure that future pipelines built in the United States be constructed of American-made materials.

Another was aimed at streamlining what he called "the incredibly cumbersome, long, horrible permitting process and reducing regulatory burdens for domestic manufacturing." The last directive was intended to expedite environmental reviews for "high-priority infrastructure projects" like highways and bridges.

Some news reports on Tuesday said that the E.P.A. and other departments had issued orders forbidding employees from issuing news releases or posting on social media. But longtime officials in multiple agencies said the guidance was similar to that of when Mr. Obama took office eight years ago.

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Trump Revives Keystone Pipeline Rejected by Obama

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WASHINGTON - President Trump sharply changed the federal government's approach to the environment on Tuesday as he cleared the way for two major oil pipelines that had been blocked, and set in motion a plan to curb regulations that slow other building projects.

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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-ogallala-aquifer/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YM2hKbdjic

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-oil-pipeline-leaks-20150522-story.html

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/26/511636325/its-a-big-one-iowa-pipeline-leaks-nearly-140-000-gallons-of-diesel?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20170126

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South Dakota rancher John Harter tried to stop TransCanada from securing the right of eminent domain over his land where they want to put part of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, but Harter recently lost his battle in court.

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Legal Issues Publication. ( click on picture)

State Department https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/keystone-pipeline-will-impact-climate-change-state-department-reports/

eminent domain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG61nflAI7E

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http://www.transcanada.com/keystone.html

http://www.keystone-xl.com/

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Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News

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It's rare to hear a reference to TransCanada Corp. these days without an accompanying mention of Keystone XL, its exhaustively debated and repeatedly deferred oil pipeline through the heart of the United States. Given the scale of public protest and political hand-wringing that has surrounded the project, casual observers might think the pipeline represents a make-it-or-break-it deal for the Calgary-based firm. But the reality is different: Certainly, Keystone is important to Canadian oil producers. But for TransCanada, previously known as a natural gas transporter (if it was known at all), not so much. The company isn't staking its future on a single, all-important project, as market-watchers are pleased to point out. "In our view, Keystone XL is becoming less relevant for TransCanada," Credit Suisse analysts wrote in an April note to clients. "From a strictly TransCanada perspective, Keystone XL is a 'nice to have' but not a 'need to have' project."

To hear it from president and CEO Russ Girling, the big issue for TransCanada-indeed, for all energy infrastructure companies-is the shale revolution. The new-found ability to extract oil and gas from solid rock formations presents both an opportunity and a threat. The opportunity lies in the fact that there's more oil and gas under our feet than previously thought. "In Canada alone, we've moved from 60 trillion cubic feet to 600 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas reserves in something under five years," Girling says. Instead of importing oil and gas from offshore, North America is now close to self-sufficiency and poised to begin pushing it in the opposite direction, toward the coasts, for export.

That raises the threat: The energy is coming from new places, rendering much of TransCanada's legacy infrastructure-the seemingly perpetual income machine that generated a 20.3% profit margin in 2013-less than optimized and, at worst, obsolete. It's cheaper today for eastern utilities to buy natural gas from nearby shale hotbeds in Pennsylvania and Ohio, for example, than to have it shipped clear across the continent from Alberta on TransCanada's namesake Canadian mainline.
MORE: The inside story of the frackers who blasted a hole in the U.S. energy crisis "
No longer able to rely on its existing assets to crank out rock-solid returns, TransCanada has a list of projects with a combined budget of $38 billion that it aims to have up and running by the end of the decade. This portfolio of unbuilt assets, it believes, will capture the new dynamics of energy supply and demand.

That $38-billion total includes Keystone XL, but a final ruling from the U.S. State Department-which could now be delayed until after the November American mid-term election-is no longer seen as essential to TransCanada's future. Of the $2 billion the company has already spent on the project, about half is recoverable, Credit Suisse estimates.

Indeed, Keystone XL isn't even the largest project on TransCanada's drawing board. That would be Energy East, a plan (more than twice as costly and potentially accretive to earnings as KXL) to repurpose one of the two parallel pipes that make up the Canadian gas mainline into the continent's longest and largest-capacity oil pipeline. Energy East would be 4,600 kilometres long, more than a metre in diameter and carry 1.1 million barrels of oil per day, more than half the oilsands' current output. It's projected to cost $12 billion. Assuming an expeditious review process-it faces less formidable opposition than either Keystone XL or Enbridge's recently approved Northern Gateway-it could be up and running by late 2018. From a fanciful afterthought a few years ago, Energy East has emerged as the oilsands-to-tidewater pipeline most likely to succeed.

"We're not going to win them all," Girling acknowledges, looking at the entire project portfolio. However, even if just half of that lineup comes into service by 2020, the company can match its historical pace of earnings growth, he says. Plus there are as-yet-uncosted projects not included in the $38 billion total-the refurbishment of the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, a natural gas line across Alaska and expansions in Mexico among them-that could take the place of a cancelled Keystone XL or gas line in B.C.

Moreover, Girling thinks the markets may have been too quick to write down the value of the Canadian mainline, still TransCanada's top earnings generator. "If you look at the cold winter we just had, it was pretty much full almost every day," he notes. "As I look at that asset going forward, I believe in a world that has more gas to move to growing markets than we ever thought possible."
MORE: Energy East is good for Canada, not the oilsands "
Indeed, an agreement reached last winter, yet to gain regulatory approval, would give eastern utilities better access to American gas on existing and yet-to-be-built TransCanada short lines while maintaining a medium-term commitment to the mainline. Combined with the eventual conversion of half the mainline to Energy East, "this settlement pretty much solves all of their exposure," says Carl Kirst, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets in Houston.

As for the future projects, "the market has imputed only modest value" to them, leaving significant upside as those projects firm up, wrote Canaccord Genuity analysts Juan Plessis and Zayem Lakhani in a recent note to clients. BMO's Kirst factors in $22 billion of the $38-billion portfolio-leaving Keystone XL and the LNG projects off the ledger-in his $59 price target. (TransCanada stock is currently trading around $54.) There's a good chance of surprises to the upside over the next 12 to 18 months, therefore, should some of these projects move forward. "They will need to get projects under construction before fair value comes into play," Kirst says.

While TransCanada's new profile has veered toward growth, it should still be viewed by investors as a yield stock, Girling says. Even the future projects will have predictable earnings, thanks to long-term contracts and regulated tolls. "If we actually get them all done," he says, the company's cash flow "will actually be less volatile than it is today." The company projects full build-out would nearly double earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization to $9.5 billion a year from $4.9 billion in 2013.

And while the growing public and regulatory scrutiny affects the certainty and timeline of growth opportunities, FirstEnergy Capital analyst Steven Paget says they won't ultimately cut into the industry's margins. Increased costs associated with safety measures will be passed on to the shippers-that is, upstream oil and gas producers. Indeed, the higher the hurdles for new projects, the wider the moat around the companies that already operate in the pipeline space.

Of course, apart from the shale revolution, another important change in the energy landscape is taking place: the drive to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. Girling insists TransCanada is onside with the trend, by enabling natural gas to be substituted for coal as the fuel for power plants, and by investing in nuclear and wind power. However, there is a faction, well represented in the opposition to Keystone XL and LNG, that would like to see a more drastic transition away from fossil fuels in all their forms.
MORE: 23 Ways Capitalism is Saving the World "
The political ascendancy of this world view, along with the ever-present risk of a major pipeline rupture and the associated cleanup costs, represents the biggest threat to TransCanada's grand plan to reconfigure North America's energy infrastructure. A network of oil and gas pipes won't be worth as much 30 years hence if people are heating their bathwater and powering their cars with solar panels on their roofs. And that's starting to become a conceivable scenario, as renewable power generation costs plummet and governments mull carbon pricing. As it is, 2013 represented a turning point, when additions to global renewable power generation capacity surpassed that for coal, gas, oil and nuclear combined by 13 gigawatts, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Girling foresees another scenario, one where the transition to a post-carbon economy unfolds more slowly. The configuration of pipes and power plants will be different, he says, "but if we do it right, we will be able to change things for the better for our company, for the communities in which we operate and for the country. I can't think of anything that can have an equal impact for all Canadians than us getting it right in terms of building the infrastructure that will allow us to monetize our natural resources on behalf of all Canadians."

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Why TransCanada can survive-even thrive-without Keystone XL

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It's rare to hear a reference to TransCanada Corp. these days without an accompanying mention of Keystone XL, its exhaustively debated and repeatedly deferred oil pipeline through the heart of the United States. Given the scale of public protest and political hand-wringing that has surrounded the project, casual observers might think the pipeline represents a make-it-or-break-it deal for the Calgary-based firm.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-zy3MjizCg

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Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News

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WASHINGTON - U.S. President Barack Obama made good Tuesday on a threat to veto a bill to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, bringing the two sides in the long-running controversy to a rare point of agreement: their battle is far from over.

"The president's veto of the Keystone jobs bill is a national embarrassment," said the top Republican in the House of Representatives, John Boehner.

"We are not going to give up in our efforts to get this pipeline built - not even close."

The issue is about to play out on two fronts. One is a major presidential regulatory decision and the other, as suggested by Boehner, likely involves future clashes with Congress.

The Canadian government echoed that theme: "It is not a question of if this project will be approved; it is a matter of when," said a statement from Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford.

"We will continue to strongly advocate for this job-creating project."

Even the White House concurred that the issue is far from settled. It pointed out that Tuesday's announcement was a step in a long, winding process - not a final destination.

The president cast the veto as a matter of procedural principle. In his letter to Congress, Obama said the bill he was scrapping had improperly tried to usurp presidential authority.

The White House position is that cross-border pipeline permits are a matter for the president to decide - not Congress, which passed a bill earlier this month forcing the approval of the project.

That bill was delivered to the president Tuesday and he vetoed it on the very first available day.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the president could still, in theory, approve the pipeline. The veto doesn't necessarily reflect Obama's view on the pipeline itself, he noted.

"It certainly is possible," said Earnest said, noting the president would keep an "open mind" on the project.

"(This) does not represent a specific position on the pipeline itself... It just merely says that the benefits, and consequences, of building that pipeline should be thoroughly evaluated by experts and through this administrative process that has existed for decades."

The administration is in the final phase of its regulatory review of the project - which was delayed by a dispute over the route in Nebraska, then again in a procedural dispute with Republicans in Congress in 2011, and once more during a court case involving Nebraska landowners last year.

The administration couldn't say Tuesday when the process would wrap up. But Earnest said he expects a decision soon after the conclusion of the review by the State Department, which is leading the process.

There could also be many more twists and turns in Congress, as alluded to by Boehner.

Republicans will attempt to override the veto, although they don't appear to have the necessary two-thirds majority. The project only has support from a minority of Democrats.

One of those rare Democrats also hinted at future congressional efforts. There's widespread expectation that lawmakers might try attaching a pipeline provision to legislation Obama might find attractive, and difficult to veto.

"We're going to basically find a middle, if you will, and move forward," West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin told Fox News on Tuesday.

But the sides in this dispute can't agree on much else - not even basic poll findings.

Keystone XL supporters point to surveys consistently showing that a majority of Americans - or at least a plurality - support the project.

But environmentalists released their own poll this week suggesting most Americans don't really have a strong opinion on the issue, and would rather see Congress move on to other things.

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Obama veto of Keystone XL bill not the final word in pipeline dispute - Canadian Business

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WASHINGTON - U.S. President Barack Obama made good Tuesday on a threat to veto a bill to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, bringing the two sides in the long-running controversy to a rare point of agreement: their battle is far from over.

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Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News

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Concerned about his legacy, the president will prove that he really does care about the environment

At a meeting of the Canadian American Business Council in New York a few months ago, Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed to keep campaigning for the Keystone XL oil pipeline even if the U.S. rejected it. "My view is that you don't take no for an answer," he insisted.

This year, he will have to. U.S. President Barack Obama will render a decision on the cross-border stretch of the pipeline, which will funnel crude from Alberta to Nebraska. The odds of approval are not looking good. "It is less than 50-50 that President Obama approves it," says Daniel Weiss, the director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, a think-tank in Washington, D.C. There are early signs Obama is leaning toward nixing the pipeline, including his assertion in a July interview with the New York Times that the pipeline would only create between 50 and 100 permanent jobs.

The president made it clear his decision ultimately comes down to the pipeline's effect on carbon emissions. That would seem to be a boon for Keystone, since a preliminary assessment by the U.S. State Department concluded its effect on carbon emissions would be negligible. Canada's oil will be extracted and marketed regardless of Keystone, the report contended, and could be shipped to the U.S. by rail, which has higher emissions.

But there is no guarantee the State Department will reach the same conclusion in its final analysis, due in the coming months. The Environmental Protection Agency, for its part, questioned whether rail is economical enough to meet production estimates. If rail can't replace Keystone, then Canadian oil won't necessarily reach the U.S. in the same quantities. Emissions could theoretically be lower if the pipeline is never built. "Because of this, it wouldn't meet the president's own criteria," Weiss says.

Despite Obama's clear signal that the pipeline's fate rests on carbon emissions, the Canadian government still hasn't implemented regulations on the oil and gas sector. The Conservatives promised way back in 2006 that every industry would be subject to mandatory emissions requirements, but nearly eight years later, little progress has been made.

In this context, rejecting the project would be better for Obama politically. "What people in Canada don't seem to fully understand is the amount of private money being put into influencing Obama to not approve it," says Lionel Conacher, a Canadian who now works at Roth Capital Partners, an investment bank in California. Billionaire Tom Steyer's aggressive anti-Keystone advertising campaign has kept the issue in the public eye. It also reminds Obama's environmental supporters that he spent his first-term focused on health care instead of global warming. This public shaming is problematic for a final-term president interested in building his legacy. During the 2008 election, Obama promised his presidency "will mark a new chapter in America's leadership on climate change." Denying Keystone gives him a chance to fulfil that promise. He'll take it.

THREE MORE PREDICTIONS

Northern gateway won't break ground: The federal cabinet will likely give its blessing to Northern Gateway in a few months, but many First Nations groups are opposed to the pipeline. It's almost guaranteed some groups will challenge Northern Gateway at the Supreme Court.

Trans mountain will spark controversy: Kinder Morgan Canada is seeking to triple the capacity of its pipeline from Edmonton to the coast of B.C., and the National Energy Board is conducting a 15-month review carrying into next year. The project hasn't generated nearly as much controversy as Northern Gateway, but environmental and native groups are beginning to voice opposition. Expect the pushback to intensify this year.

The East will demand a piece of the pipeline pie: TransCanada and Enbridge are seeking ways to move oil from Alberta to refineries and export terminals in the east. Ontario ordered public hearings into TransCanada's Energy East, and Quebec did the same for Enbridge's Line 9. Both provinces will likely flex their muscles by submitting a list of conditions the pipelines have to meet in order to win approval.

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Why Obama will ultimately say no to Keystone XL - Canadian Business

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Concerned about his legacy, the president will prove that he really does care about the environment At a meeting of the Canadian American Business Council in New York a few months ago, Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed to keep campaigning for the Keystone XL oil pipeline even if the U.S.

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https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/keystonexlmyths.pdf

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-oil-pipeline-leaks-20150522-story.html

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/26/511636325/its-a-big-one-iowa-pipeline-leaks-nearly-140-000-gallons-of-diesel

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/blogs-and-comment/why-tom-steyers-keystone-strategy-might-backfire/

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Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News

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Obama's rejection of the pipeline is a wake-up call for Canada's oil patch

A subtle semantic shift was evident in Alberta Premier Jim Prentice's response to U.S. President Barack Obama's vetoing the Keystone XL pipeline bill on Tuesday. As he has in other recent pronouncements, Prentice spoke of his province's commitment to "responsible" energy development. Not to be found in his statement was "sustainable," a word previous premiers used without reservation, and which still litters the Alberta government's various websites.

This is a welcome development. It signals that Prentice, at least, gets it: Canada's oil patch can no longer dismiss the environmental movement. It's no longer possible to treat environmental issues like a public relations or engineering problem, to be worked at around the edges. The effects of oilsands production on climate change must be confronted sooner or later-and given the increasing incidence of weird weather and coastal flooding, probably sooner.

Here was a two-term U.S. president responding not just to a core constituency, but a larger mushy middle of the population that intuitively knows greenhouse gas emissions need to be not only reduced but eliminated over a yet-to-be determined period. Sure, Canada's oilsands have been unfairly and possibly unwisely targeted, considering their small impact on global emissions relative to Chinese and American coal-fired power plants.

But that's not the point. Canadians, as much as anyone else, need to let go of a few fictions and develop a plan for winding down-even over a very long time-the use of fossil fuels.

One of those fictions, which emanated from Calgary's office towers and government communications, is that of "sustainable" fossil fuel production. The use of that word not only undermines the user's credibility in discussions of "energy literacy," but shows a basic unfamiliarity with a dictionary. When you take an organic compound that has been locked inertly in the earth for hundreds of millions of years, chemically transform it, and release it into the atmosphere, you are doing something inherently unsustainable. Never mind whether the activity causes climate change or ocean acidification or how long the effects take to manifest-it's unsustainable.

What Prentice appears to have grasped is that Alberta and its oil and gas industry need to start talking honestly about their role in a world transitioning to a post-carbon economy. That precludes being hell-bent on extracting and selling every last drop of oil, lump of coal and whiff of gas lying under our feet while we still can. It means being a responsible provider, for now, of a still necessary evil.
MORE KEYSTONE XL:

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Obama's Keystone veto is a wakeup call for Canada's oil patch

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Obama's rejection of the pipeline is a wake-up call for Canada's oil patch A subtle semantic shift was evident in Alberta Premier Jim Prentice's response to U.S. President Barack Obama's vetoing the Keystone XL pipeline bill on Tuesday. As he has in other recent pronouncements, Prentice spoke of his province's commitment to "responsible" energy development.

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Private US OIL companies like Shell or Exxon.

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Private US OIL companies like Shell or Exxon.

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http://www.shell.com/about-us/major-projects/athabasca-oil-sands-project.html

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Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News

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Marvin Odum's job titles could fill several business cards. He is president of Shell Oil Co. in the United States, and sits on the executive committee of Royal Dutch Shell, its parent company. But for Canadians, his most important role is serving as the executive director of Shell Upstream Americas, where he supervises exploration and production across the Western Hemisphere. Falling within his portfolio are the company's Canadian operations, including the Athabasca oilsands project and its growing interests in liquefied natural gas (LNG), including a proposed export terminal in Kitimat, B.C., with a rumoured price tag of more than $12 billion. The company is also at the forefront of efforts to change the oilsands' poor environmental image, investing in the $1.35-billion Quest project, which captures carbon emissions from oilsands operations and buries them beneath the surface. While seen as a pilot project for the industry, it also took millions in provincial and federal government support to launch. In an interview with Canadian Business deputy editor James Cowan, Odum spoke about whether the Keystone XL pipeline will ever receive U.S. approval, why cap-and-trade is good for industry, and what it will take for Canada to become a world leader in LNG.

Canadian Business: Last year, the International Energy Agency issued a report suggesting the United States will become energy self-sufficient within a couple of decades. For your U.S. business, I imagine this is very good news. But, as Canadians, should we be worried?

Marvin Odum: I don't really think so. I'm not sure that U.S. energy independence is even the right discussion. It makes some sense that the next step might be North American energy independence, but not the U.S. exclusively. I think the connection with Canada, in particular, is very, very important and will continue to be important into the future.

CB: But why would the United States keep using our oil or natural gas? You have been tremendously successful finding new domestic sources of oil and gas.

MO: You know, the U.S. still imports a tremendous amount of oil on a daily basis, and I don't think it's realistic to expect to offset that over a very short period of time, so the connection with Canada is critically important. When it comes to the natural gas side of things, then I think it's a question of what is the most efficient market dynamic. So, you know, if I produce a molecule of gas in Louisiana, it might be actually more efficient for a molecule of gas to be supplied in Washington state to come from Canada rather than come from Louisiana.

CB: Crossing the border brings us to the issue of Keystone. In a speech in October 2011, you said, "My confidence is high the pipeline will go forward." Eighteen months later is your confidence at the same level?

MO: It's still high. It's already been slower than I expected, so I need to start with that point, but my confidence is still high that it's going to ultimately be approved. Now, I don't know exactly what the terms will be on the approval. But I think the assurances that have been added around safety performance and so forth are important, and I think now that the routing of the line is being finalized, my expectation is it will be approved.

CB: The U.S. ambassador has made some comments suggesting the Americans are pushing Canada to embrace climate-change initiatives, perhaps cap-and-trade, in exchange for approval of the pipeline. Does it worry you that the pipeline might be approved but at the cost of further regulation and further restrictions?

MO: We're very conscious of the fact that the world is likely moving to a place of regulating carbon in some respect. What's important to us, and what our primary push has been with governments, is ensuring that as these regulations come into play, that they're market-based systems to allow carbon regulation to happen at the lowest possible cost. So no, I'm not concerned about that. Also, I have to say I'm fairly skeptical that there's going to be any cap-and-trade or CO2 trading system like that in the U.S. any time soon.

CB: If you're looking for a market-based solution, though, cap-and-trade might actually be preferable to other options.

MO: Yeah, which is a system that, from early on, we supported and said, "This is probably one of the clearest examples of a market-based system."

CB: Would it make it easier for you folks if Canada implemented a price on carbon, even without the Americans?

MO: Well, I think there's a case to be made that the most helpful thing would be some sort of globally aligned policy. That would be the most helpful. Then the next layer down is some sort of regional or hemispheric way of approaching it. And then the next level down is a country-by-country approach. You become less efficient as you move down that chain.

CB: Beyond this apparent push toward cap-and-trade, what do you think it will take to finally get Keystone approved in the States?

MO: I don't know. But for those who are concerned about Keystone pipeline coming through the U.S., some look at what they think they know about the environmental performance of the oilsands and say, "I'm not comfortable with that." So I think more information on the environmental performance of the oilsands and how that's changing over time and how that's improving over time might go along with an approval process. Shell's been working with the Alberta government and the Canadian government on the Quest carbon-capture and storage project at our oilsands operations. It's a great example of efforts to reduce carbon emissions from oilsands. If you're strictly worried about CO2 intensity, the Quest project is a step toward bringing the oilsands closer to having the same emission levels of other sources of oil.

CB: The Quest project is an interesting example, because it took a significant amount of government support to get it up and running. In the long term, could a carbon-capture and storage project be wholly funded by the private sector?

MO: If you want the market to derive these kind of solutions, there has to be a market driver. At the same time, these pilot projects are where you learn how to lower the cost. So without doing it, you don't learn, but you can't do it based on market dynamics. And so it takes this partnership between government and business. But ultimately, it could be something in the right policy framework-like a price on carbon-that companies could do on their own.

CB: We're in the midst of a big push toward LNG terminals along the West Coast, designed to export to Asia and other markets. But there are other countries chasing the same markets. Are we going to get our infrastructure in place fast enough to beat, say, Australia?

MO: I think the global increase in demand for LNG will support Canadian entry into that market, and North American entry into that market. But Canada and North America, as you indicated are not the only places that can come from. So making sure we're doing it in a way that's competitive is going to be key. Canada's provincial and federal governments need to think about fiscal structure, taxes, royalties, all the other elements of that fiscal framework that will ultimately bear on the profitability of those projects to allow them to be competitive with the Australians and with the African projects and so forth. I don't know that the window will close on them completely, but there's going to be a next wave of projects, and Canada will need a competitive framework to be in that wave.

CB: So you'd caution against moves like the B.C. premier coming out and saying that they're thinking about an export or excise tax on LNG?

MO: That discussion is no different than the discussion we have anywhere in the world on any project in the world, so to me there's nothing surprising about the conversation. But by the time you get to the end point of making a decision to invest, it needs to be a globally competitive structure. But there's nothing unusual about asking questions.

CB: You've mentioned a window of opportunity. How long do we have?

MO: I think we're looking at a next wave of LNG projects in the next decade. And if you think about the time line associated with these, there's multiple years of permitting process, there's a decision to make the investment, and then there's multiple years of building, constructing, and then being ready to export. So we're somewhere inside that six- to 10-year time frame. That's the window of opportunity for Canada to show itself as competitive with those other global opportunities.

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Why Keystone XL will be approved: one-on-one with Shell Oil president Marvin Odum

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Marvin Odum's job titles could fill several business cards. He is president of Shell Oil Co. in the United States, and sits on the executive committee of Royal Dutch Shell, its parent company. But for Canadians, his most important role is serving as the executive director of Shell Upstream Americas, where he supervises exploration and production across the Western Hemisphere.

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https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-02-19/native-american-tribes-unite-fight-keystone-pipeline-and-government-disrespect

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te0B52WV3lM

https://teeic.indianaffairs.gov/er/oilgas/impact/drilldev/index.htm

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/24/us/dapl-keystone-pipeline-environment-protesters-trump-order/