Prediction time: Obama will side with the EPA.
Via RT:
The future of a controversial oil project is now up in the air after the United States Environmental Protection Agency issued a letter condemning the State Department’s recent environmental impact review of the Keystone XL pipeline.
On Monday, EPA Assistant Administrator for Enforcement and Compliance Cynthia Giles wrote the US Department of State to say that that agency’s March 2013 environmental impact report was “insufficient.”
If approved, supporters of the project say the creation of a 1,700-mile pipeline stretching from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico could create thousands of jobs and help alleviate concerns that America might become too oil-dependent on other nations. Environmentalists, however — and now the EPA — fear that the benefits of the Keystone XL pipeline might not outweigh the potentially catastrophic consequences that come with not just the construction of the project but the constant movement of toxic tar sands under the surface of the earth.
Oil giant TransCanada has been asking the White House to sign off on the project since 2008, and the debate has become a topic of contention among the Obama administration. Since the pipeline would cross international borders, the final go-ahead will likely come from the Department of State, which is tasked with deciding if a presidential permit should be issued to TransCanada. This week’s sharply worded critique of that agency’s latest assessment report suggests it won’t be a smooth process, though.
The EPA says that the State Department needs to go back and do some more research before it approves the pipeline, arguing over the course of several pages with the draft environmental impact assessment that agency released back in February.
When the State Department weighed in earlier this year, it largely found that approving the Keystone project would have little impact on climate change. The EPA says such isn’t the case, though, and insists the State Department do a more thorough analysis of what a major oil spill or other disaster spawned by the $7 billion project could do to the environment.
HT: Robert