Keystone's just another pipeline

Keystone's just another pipeline: Our view

The Editorial Board, USATODAY

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Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP

President Obama at the TransCanada yard in Cushing, Okla., in 2012.

Sometimes a pipeline is just a pipeline, not an environmental cataclysm or a panacea for a struggling economy. But you'd never know that from the seemingly endless debate over the Keystone XL project, which critics and defenders alike have hijacked to serve their larger agendas.

The argument over Keystone has festered and intensified ever since a Canadian company applied in 2008 for permission to build the pipeline, which would carry oil from the tar sands of western Canada to Gulf Coast refineries.

OPPOSING VIEW: No redeeming value

On the merits, the Obama administration should long ago have said yes. The line would bring a reliable new supply to the United States, which still imports almost 30% of its oil. But the White House seems to have been paralyzed by its fear of angering ally Canada if it says no or infuriating Democratic environmentalists if it says yes. The result has been six years of dithering and the rise of arguments on both sides that are exaggerations at best or lies at worst.

Keystone opponents have claimed that approval of the controversial line would be "game over" for the planet because it would unlock huge quantities of environmentally destructive tar sands oil that would spike global greenhouse gas emissions. But guess what? That oil is getting unlocked anyway, with or without Keystone. And if it doesn't come to the U.S., it will head to markets in China and elsewhere.

Keystone defenders, meanwhile, tout the line's economic benefits, and a State Department analysis says that during the year or two it would take to build, Keystone could produce about 42,000 direct and indirect jobs. That's nothing to sneeze at, but once the line is built, the number of permanent jobs would plummet to just 35.

President Obama said this month that he wants the State Department's endless environmental evaluation to continue, giving frustrated members of Congress an opening to step in. Two Louisiana lawmakers who will face each other in the state's Senate runoff next month are promoting measures aimed at forcing the Obama administration to approve the pipeline.

The House passed Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy's bill on Friday, 252-161. Tuesday, Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu is set to try to get the Senate to approve it.

This political gamesmanship should be unnecessary, but Obama invited it by delaying a decision on Keystone until after any election in which the issue could hurt him or fellow Democrats. Enough already.

Keystone is a useful way to provide oil for a nation that, like it or not, still relies heavily on petroleum and imports it from nations far less trustworthy than Canada. Most of the refined product would remain in the USA. The line would also help move landlocked oil from fields in North Dakota and Montana that must often travel by rail, a more dangerous and inefficient mode of transport.

Keystone is not an existential issue. It's a 1,179-mile oil pipeline in a nation already crisscrossed by more than 150,000 miles of such pipelines. It's long past time to say yes.

USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.