Keystone: Looks Like the Canadians Got Tired of Waiting for Obama

The Canadians have waited six years for President Obama, beholden to the trust fund babies in the environmental movement, to make a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline.

Enough is enough.  Bloomberg News reports that Canada is building a $10.7 billion pipeline that will let Canada to bypass President Obama’s delaying tactics. This pipeline will run into the Atlantic instead of across the U.S. The new project has been dubbed “Keystone on steroids.”

Yahoo News reports:

The Keystone pipeline was supposed to create jobs and lessen U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Instead, it has created political theatre, polarizing policymakers over environmental and safety issues.

Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Aaron Task says, “This is all about ‘You snooze, you lose.’” The goal of Canada’s proposed Energy East[the name of the new pipeline that will be built instead of the Keystone XL]  is to bring tar sands oil from the province of Alberta straight out to the Atlantic Ocean ports in New Brunswick on the east coast of Canada. The oil can then be shipped out to Europe. Bloomberg has called the proposed pipeline, “Keystone on steroids.”

Looks like the president will get his comeuppance, but unfortunately it is the country that will pay the price. Keystone could have created jobs for Americans and it could have brought us inexpensive energy from a (still?) friendly country.

Not as impervious to reality as our own president and his environmentalist soul mates, the Europeans seem ready to welcome Canada’s crude:  

The European Union had planned to label the oil as highly polluting, but changed its mind this week.  That's opening up the opportunity for Canada to export oil to the European market.

The EU’s change of heart on oil sands may have more to do with the political climate than global warming. Europe’s dependence on Russian oil has been a growing concern within the EU, says Task. “Putin’s saying, ‘You know, Europe, you’re on your own. I am going to send my oil in another direction and it’s going to be very cold this winter.’” Europe sees Canada, in turn, as having one of the largest reserves in the world.

The upshot is that Canada will be able to sell its crude. There will be fewer environmental restrictions than the U.S. would have imposed and the jobs that American citizens could have had will go elsewhere.

As I read the news from Canada, however, it is still not too late to build Keystone XL, which would bring innumerable benefits to the United States, despite Canada’s new opening to other ports:

What Energy East means for the Keystone XL pipeline remains to be seen. [Yahoo’s] Task says, “Maybe this will be a wake up call to President Obama and U.S. policymakers to say ‘Hmmm we’re going to get shut out of not just the energy, but all those jobs that are going to go into building that pipeline. Now they are all going to go into Canada.’”

A sensible president would be on the phone this morning telling Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper that after six years of delay he is approving the Keystone XL pipeline today and welcoming it to the U.S. That is what a sensible president would be doing. Instead, we have a president who has other plans for his day.