The House returns today from its President’s Day recess. One of the first orders of business for Speaker John Boehner is to send the Keystone XL Pipeline Approval Act to President Obama.
When the measure passed the House a fortnight ago, it actually marked the 11th time the lower chamber’s Republican majority voted to authorize the pipeline project.
On the 10 previous occasions, House bills supporting construction of Keystone XL were killed in the Senate, which was then controlled by Democrats under the leadership of Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, an implacable foe of the project.
Though the new Republican controlled Senate passed the Keystone XL Pipeline Approval Act in January – with nine Democrats voting with the GOP – it remains improbable the measure becomes law. That’s because the president has vowed to veto the bill if and when it made it to his desk.
“I won’t hide my opinion about this,” said Mr. Obama, back in November. “One major determinant of whether we should approve a pipeline shipping Canadian oil to world markets, not to the United States, is does it contribute to the greenhouse gases that are causing climate change?”
We find the president’s explanation for his opposition to Keystone XL disingenuous.
Indeed, a State Department analysis concluded that there would be “no export of light or heavy crude from Keystone XL … to overseas markets.” Meanwhile, a study by the energy research group IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates determined that Keystone XL “will have no material effect on U.S. GHGs.”
So if Mr. Obama vetoes legislation to green-light the pipeline project, it will not be because of the 830,000 barrels of crude that will be shipped from Alberta, Canada to Gulf Coast refineries that some say will not benefit U.S. motorists.
Nor will it be because the crude oil that courses through the 1,660-mile Keystone XL pipeline will wreck the climate like no other pipeline before.
No, the president’s opposition to Keystone XL is driven strictly by politics. He has cast his lot with environmental hysterics like former hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer, whose “friends and allies” oppose the pipeline project, he told Mr. Obama, in an open letter, while reminding him that they “supported his reelection in 2012.”
The question is whether the president will do the bidding of Mr. Steyer, the biggest individual political donor in 2014, according to OpenSecrets.org, or heed the wishes of the American people, some 60 percent of whom support Keystone XL, according to a poll last month by CBS News.
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