When the State Department issued its environmental impact statement on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline two weeks ago, the media’s main takeaway was that State had found the project would not significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions.
But as environmental advocates have dug deeper into the report in the days since, they have concluded that State made several flawed assumptions and decisions. Moreover, even its own findings show potential contributions to global warming if the pipeline moves forward.
Here are environmentalists’ three major complaints:
1. The questionable assumption that tar-sands development is inevitable. Tar-sands oil is more expensive to extract than conventional oil. The State Department anticipates that high oil prices will make it economically viable to drill in the Canadian tar sands whether or not Keystone XL is built, and therefore concludes that the pipeline won’t lead to more tar-sands oil extraction or CO2 emissions.
2. Lack of context. State’s report did not consider Keystone in relation to other proposed pipeline projects — like an expansion of Enbridge’s Alberta Clipper Pipeline, which runs from the Alberta tar sands to Superior, Wis. Sixteen environmental organizations sent a letter to State saying it should have considered this larger context. The letter observed, “The Supreme Court has recognized that ‘when several proposals … that will have cumulative or synergistic environmental impact upon a region are pending concurrently before an agency, their environmental consequences must be considered together.’”
3. Conflict of interest. Environmental Resources Management (ERM), the consulting firm contracted to do the environmental impact study, was recommended to State by TransCanada, the company that wants to build the pipeline. In response to a query from State, ERM said it had not worked with TransCanada in the previous three years. But after it won the contract, ERM admitted that it had worked on a TransCanada project.
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