Keystone XL pipeline pollution is manageable, says Canada PM Harper

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said that the US should approve the Keystone XL pipeline because it does little environmental damage and will benefit the economies of the world’s largest trading partners.

Harper and his ministers are ramping up efforts to win support for critical pipeline projects going west, east and south, at the same time the exact content – and existence – of a reported letter to US President Barack Obama on a climate plan and the Keystone XL remains a mystery.

“We continue to be open to working with our American partners,” Harper told reporters recently. The project’s “environmental impacts are manageable and not significant,” Harper said, adding “the project will enhance energy security for North America.”

According to reports from Ottawa, Harper wrote to Obama last month to ease environmental concerns about Keystone. Harper allegedly sent a letter in late August to Obama proposing “joint action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the oil and gas sector” if it will help win approval of the Keystone XL oilsands pipeline from Alberta to the US Gulf Coast, CBC News reported last week.

Obama said in a June speech Keystone shouldn’t be approved if it were found to “significantly exacerbate” greenhouse-gas emissions.

TransCanada’s KXL is part of Canada’s oilsands strategy

The pipeline linking Alberta’s oilsands to US Gulf Coast refineries was proposed by Calgary-based Transcanada Corp. five years ago and must be approved by Obama after a State Department review.

Harper also said his country remains open to foreign investment after setting some restrictions on how state-owned corporations can bid on oil sands assets.

“We favour a diverse and competitive business environment,” Harper said. He also said state-owned corporations will remain a part of government’s foreign investment strategy.

Harper restricted foreign takeovers by state-owned corporations in Alberta’s oilsands to “exceptional circumstances” in December when he approved CNOOC Ltd’s Cdn$ 15.1 billion takeover of Nexen Inc.

Rolling out pipeline campaigns

Prime Minister Harper is dispatching a number of his ministers and senior bureaucrats to B.C. in the coming weeks to meet with First Nations chiefs, part of an ongoing effort to see progress on a couple of proposed pipeline projects that would send Alberta oilsands to the West Coast for shipment to lucrative markets in Asia and elsewhere.

Ottawa has also been ratcheting up its campaign to convince Washington to approve the Keystone XL oilsands pipeline.

But the Conservative government won’t confirm whether Harper has, indeed, written a letter to the US president agreeing to harmonise Canada’s greenhouse gas regulations for the oil and gas sector with the US in hopes of getting the Obama administration to approve Keystone.

Tactics

“It’s as though the Canadian government is trying to find a face-saving way for the President to claim moral victory and just move on,” said Christopher Sands, a specialist in Canada-US relations at the Hudson Institute, a think-tank in Washington D.C.

Obama has boxed himself into a corner on Keystone XL, so having the Canadian government agree to work with the US on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the energy sector could be a way to approve the pipeline while still demonstrating some action on climate change, he said.

“It maybe lets Obama say ‘I got something for my strategy. I didn’t blow this one,’” Sands said. “He allowed this thing [Keystone] to become a bigger problem than it might have been.”

The US$ 5.3 billion Keystone XL pipeline would transport 830 000 bpd of oil primarily from Alberta’s oilsands and the Bakken formation in North Dakota to refineries on the US Gulf Coast.

The Harper government says the Keystone XL project is an important component of trying to increase pipeline capacity and getting western Canadian crude to market.

Opposition to the pipeline

Environmentalists on both sides of the border are cynical about reports of this alleged prime ministerial appeal to the White House for common North American greenhouse-gas emissions standards in the oil and gas sector.

A statement from 350.org, a group of international climate-change activists, described the reported overture as "a last-ditch bait-and-switch by the Canadian government."

And the Sierra Club of Canada and Greenpeace Canada both said any Canadian promises on climate change ring hollow after years of government inaction.

Critics also point out that any pipeline that increases the export capacity of oilsands production will only make it more difficult for Canada to meet its greenhouse-gas emissions targets.

The final approval on the project rests with Obama, but it appears a decision won’t be announced until 2014.

Edited from various sources by Elizabeth Corner

Read the article online at: https://www.worldpipelines.com/business-news/17092013/keystone_xl_pipeline_pollution_is_manageable_says_canada_pm_harper/