Why does canada need the keystone pipeline

Table of contents. Was this page helpful? Yes No. All fields are required unless otherwise indicated. What were you trying to do? And many U. Still, while the U. Meanwhile, U. He covers Canadian and U. Why the U. Canada Why the U. Ramped up domestic oil production and new supply routes have lessened the U. Social Sharing. Alberta premier calls Biden's XL cancellation a 'gut punch' for U. In the here and now, more energy is required to extract oil from the Alberta oil sands than in traditional drilling, and Environment Canada says it has found industry chemicals seeping into ground water and the Athabasca River.

This risk to local communities is one of the reasons many have opposed the project. First Nations groups in Northern Alberta have even gone so far as to sue the provincial and federal government for damages from 15 years of oil sands development they were not consulted on, including treaty-guaranteed rights to hunt, trap and fish on traditional lands.

Rejoining Paris sets ambitious climate goal for Biden. Image source, Getty Images. The Keystone XL pipeline has been disputed for more than a decade. What is Keystone XL? How was XL initially approved? Image source, Reuters. Many had hoped that the disastrous project was finally done for in November , when the Obama administration vetoed the pipeline—acknowledging its pervasive threats to climate, ecosystems, drinking water sources, and public health.

But immediately after taking office, President Donald Trump brought the zombie project back to life, along with the legal battles against it. By the time President Biden took office in , ready to fulfill his campaign promise to revoke the cross-border permit, the dirty energy pipeline had become one of the foremost climate controversies of our time.

It was expected to transport , barrels of Alberta tar sands oil per day to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas. These sands contain bitumen, a gooey type of petroleum that can be converted into fuel. The proposed Keystone XL extension actually comprised two segments. The first, a southern leg, had already been completed and now runs between Cushing, Oklahoma, and Port Arthur, Texas. Opponents of this project—now called the Gulf Coast Pipeline—say that TC Energy took advantage of legal loopholes to push the pipeline through, obtaining authorization under a U.

Army Corps of Engineers nationwide permit and dodging the more rigorous vetting process for individual permits, which requires public input. The second segment was the hotly contested 1,mile northern leg—a shortcut of sorts—that would have run from Hardisty, Alberta, through Montana and South Dakota to Steele City, Nebraska. In , the U. State Department, under President Barack Obama, declined to grant the northern leg of the Keystone XL project the permit required to construct, maintain, and operate the pipeline across the U.

Tar sands oil is thicker, more acidic, and more corrosive than lighter conventional crude, and this ups the likelihood that a pipeline carrying it will leak. Indeed, one study found that between and , pipelines moving tar sands oil in Midwestern states spilled three times more per mile than the U. Less than two years before the project was finally pulled, the Keystone tar sands pipeline was temporarily shut down after a spill in North Dakota of reportedly more than , gallons in late October And the risk that Keystone XL would have spilled was heightened because of the extended time the pipe segments were left sitting outside in stockpiles.

Complicating matters, leaks can be difficult to detect. People and wildlife coming into contact with tar sands oil are exposed to toxic chemicals, and rivers and wetland environments are at particular risk from a spill. For evidence, note the tar sands oil spill in Kalamazoo River, Michigan , a disaster that cost Enbridge more than a billion dollars in cleanup fees and took six years to settle in court.