I guess we’ll have to wait for official confirmation, but multiple news outlets are reporting that the Obama administration will announce this morning that they’ve rejected the Keystone XL pipeline project. It was fascinating to watch how they strung this decision out and how external factors keep moving in a direction to make this a less debatable decision.
One thing that’s interesting is that they chose to do this announcement as a typical Friday news dump, which indicates that they’re still not all that excited about the political ramifications of it. It will divide the party, I guess, and if they were more confident in the politics, they’d be trumpeting this news on a Monday.
“they chose to do this announcement as a typical Friday news dump, which indicates that they’re still not all that excited about the political ramifications of it”
I thought they might have timed the announcement to coincide with the positive jobs report, to highlight that we don’t really need the pipeline as a “job creator”. But you make a good point.
Curious if petros have managed to get a relaxation of the “no refined petroleum products” export embargo?
even when they do the right thing, this admin so often does so (as here) with a cringe, from a defensive crouch (see gay/marriage rights, to which they had to be dragged kicking and screaming). This never lessens or insulates them from the abuse such a decision always brings. Seems counter-productive, even self-defeating, to do something other than just embrace it (the rightwingnuts are just going to hang it around their necks anyway; may as well welcome that and claim it) and robustly defend it AS the right thing to do.
Oh my God, is this really going to happen here…
The President and his Adminstration do the right thing, and the Obama complainers at the Frog Pond are going to complain that he didn’t do it the right way…
THANKS, OBAMA!!
It comes off very petty. Reward a politician when they do the right thing, for pete’s sake. Give the carping a rest for the moment and target it appropriately.
Obama complainers?
What changed over the last couple of years with Keystone that Obama decided that now is the time to kill it?
probably always was going to kill it; ran out of special committees to study the problem so time to kill it. of course ppl are also going to say he did it for his legacy, not b/c he thought it was right
Keystone XL is going down? No problem.
Hillary will put it right back up again.
After she bombs Iran, of course
…and the price of oil goes backup to $100 a barrel.
But before that Russia and Saudi will get the price up to at least $50.
WIth the collapse of oil prices globally, pumping sludge across North America is no longer economically justifiable. This actually gives the rich a reason to bail on it and still blame Obama.
In reality, oil should have never been priced at $100 a barrel. There has never been actual demand or supply metrics to support $100 price. The idea to pipe oil across america was a hedge fund talking point that had no basis in reality. The pipeline was nothing more than an issue the GOP could run on…JOBS, JOBS, JOBS.
Monopoly, Baby!
in the form of a Friday after-COB document dump. In fact, there WAS some ‘fanfare’ (i.e., presser, video, both Biden and Kerry present and highly visible), with good reasons for and defense of the decision articulated, per reporting I’ve just skimmed.
So there’s that.
OTOH, this has been a no-brainer of an choice for years now.
A kudos to those on the ground who fought and delayed this thing until oil prices came down and gave the dmin the civer it wanted.
We probably should really be thanking Saudi Arabia for opening up their spigots and dumping oil on the global market to drive the high cost producers- like the Canadian tar sands operations XL was supposed to supprt, out of business.
All Obama did was try to salvage some political capital out of a fate accompli. Not that thanks shouldn’t go out to everyone that did protest- they definitely slowed the process down and added an element of pain on the politicians that wasn’t there before.
Takes the spotlight off TPP.
If we are ever to have the slightest hope of saving the 11,000 year old stable climate, then actions like this are essential and (who knows) possibly historic. Thank you Prez Obama, and SOS Kerry, who likely was the one who really killed this. Hillary seems to have green lighted it back when it first raised its slimy head.
As one who has spoken against this thing for as long as it’s been in the news, we need to be reminded that one of the conventional wisdom arguments was that this “oil” was certain be exploited no matter what, so we might as well build the damn thing–it was “inevitable”. Well, we’ll see. It’s not lookin’ so inevitable right now…
If Canadians want to exploit their environmentally destructive and disastrous tar sands, then THEY can do it. Canada isn’t landlocked, they can run a goddam pipeline to either coast if they and BigOil want. And they can build (more) oil refineries, too. It’s just that this would be massively expensive, and it is already massively expensive simply to turn this sludge into “oil” to begin with. Add in the fact that the west coast of Canada has a citizenry that likely will never approve a pipeline ending in their beautiful Vancouver bay or thereabouts and one can see the weakness in the “inevitability” argument.
There has been a great drop in the per barrel price of oil, and it is not particularly clear what has caused this—supply or demand. The data for this, incredibly, is very suspect. It appears that the cheaper cost oil producers of the Gulf have increased supply to some degree (or more, accurately, refused to decrease production in the face of fracked oil), but this alone cannot explain the drop in price. There has been an increase in fracked oil of course, although that likely will be changing. But there has been a decline in demand, too—especially in the US. So increased supply AND decreased demand operating in tandem are the likely answer for the drop.
The human race must make do with the oil that can be withdrawn from the earth without massive environmental risk and damage. Frankly, the US is out of that type of oil. And that risk analysis should mean no oil ever from Canada’s tar sands. If Canada and BigOil want to wreck western Canada, then THEY can bear the burden of the destruction–we don’t need to be the brainless stooges who enable the insanity.
Anyway, a very rare environmental victory to celebrate.