President Obama’s decision to block the construction of the Keystone Pipeline is an illustration of everything that is wrong with this administration’s flawed energy policy. While Obama says it needs more time to assess the potential risks surrounding the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, a vast underground network of more than 2 million miles of energy pipeline already traverses the United States.
On Wednesday Obama blocked a permit for the $7 billion Keystone XL claiming a more thorough review is needed to examine problems it may pose to the nation’s air and water quality. The administration also blamed Republicans for including a provision in a recent tax cut bill that compelled a decision within a 60-day time frame. President Obama has had the approval documents as well as environmental studies on his desk for three years, and keep in mind this administration made the knee jerk–green light, risky decision on Solyndra within a two month time frame. So, it appears research time for this Administration’s energy decisions depend on ideological priority and politics
The U.S. State Department has expressed concerns over the pipeline’s environmental impact, particularly in the Nebraska Sandhills, an area of porous hills that includes a high concentration of wetlands and a key aquifer. Environmental activist groups also claim the pipeline system could pollute air and water supplies as well as harm fragile ecosystems. The original route also called for the pipeline to cross the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the world’s largest aquifers that extends into eight states and provides drinking water for two million people.
But several energy experts say the Keystone XL would be no different from an extensive network of energy pipelines already in place – and some say its state-of-the-art design would make it safer than many of the country’s aging pipelines.
“There’s no shortage of energy pipelines,” says Dan Kish, senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research. “This pipeline would be better than 1.9 million miles of pipeline already in the United States. It’s newer and has the best technology.”
Kish said underground pipelines are the safest way to transport crude oil, though he acknowledged that “whenever you have any kind of human endeavor, you have potential problems and they do occur.”
“We have tens of thousands of pipeline and I don’t think there’s any good evidence that pipelines are a significant impact on ecosystems to the point that they can’t adapt,” said Kenneth Green, resident scholar at The American Enterprise Institute .
So it appears experts are refuting what Americans already knew to be simple common sense: A private, non-government funded energy project that will produce upwards of 20,000 real shovel ready jobs, helping to make America less energy dependent on foreign oil, and safely transported, again according to experts, is not the direction far left environmentalists want the U.S. to steer toward. So, President Obama made a purely political decision in an effort to save his own job and to appease his liberal base thereby hurting real job growth and angering middle income Americans and even labor unions.
An Administration riddled with a myriad of poor decisions, the Keystone decision has to be Obama’s biggest folly to date.
-Buzz
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