Phillip Bump at Grist lets us in on the news that the Army Corp of Engineers has approved the last leg of the Keystone I pipeline which will then run from Alberta Canada to the Gulf of Mexico
I know, I know: The Keystone XL pipeline has been held up. You protested at the White House to stop it. That’s cool. But what you may not know is that Keystone XL would augment a section of pipeline that already brings tar-sands oil from Canada to Nebraska. On Friday, the Army Corps of Engineers signed off on the last permits TransCanada needed for a still-empty stretch from there to the Gulf Coast. Which means that the company will soon have a complete shunt traversing the entire height of the United States.
President Barack Obama encouraged TransCanada to move ahead with the segment that will run from a refinery in Cushing, Okla. to Texas after he rejected the broader [Keystone XL] plan, saying the pipeline needed to be rerouted around Nebraska’s sensitive Sand Hills region. For that project, TransCanada needs presidential approval because it crosses an international border. The shorter portion only requires permits from state and federal agencies. TransCanada said the final of three permits it needed from the Army Corps of Engineers had been approved. …
The line from Cushing will help relieve a bottleneck at the Oklahoma refinery, but doesn’t fulfill TransCanada’s broader goal of transporting more Canadian crude to U.S. refineries.
You see the Keystone XL was proposed to
increase the flow of tar sands oil to the Gulf. Here is the TransCanada vision to transport their dirty tar sands oil to the Gulf.
Sonja Poet
That broken line is Keystone XL. If built, it would carry 830,000 barrels of tar-sands oil a day from Alberta to Steele City, Neb. — some 1,179 miles. But see that snaky red line? That’s Keystone I . It runs 2,147 miles, carrying 591,000 barrels a day. It goes to Steele City already. Then another Keystone leg connects it to Cushing. And now, thanks to the Army Corps of Engineers, TransCanada will soon have a route that slides on down to the Gulf Coast That would be the yellow broken line at the bottom of the map.
The New York Times ran an editorial yesterday recommending that the Keystone XL be rejected once and for all on the grounds of it's contribution to climate change.