As Meteor Blades and Winter Rabbit pointed out in separate diaries on Monday, the Keystone XL pipeline is still very much alive and well.
That same day, TransCanada announced it would file a new permit application.
More below the Socialist Orange Squiggle.
From the press release, found posted on Penn Energy's website:
February 27, 2012
Source: TransCanada Corporation
TransCanada Corporation (TSX: TRP) (NYSE: TRP) (TransCanada) announced today it has sent a letter to the U.S. Department of State (DOS) informing the Department the company plans to file a Presidential Permit application (cross border permit) in the near future for the Keystone XL Project from the U.S./Canada border in Montana to Steele City, Nebraska. TransCanada would supplement that application with an alternative route in Nebraska as soon as that route is selected.
What TransCanada is trying to do is incorporate the parts of the environmental review that have already been completed as part of their first application with an as yet unstarted review of a new route through Nebraska.
Unstarted, because the route has not yet been determined. But the company wants to start the clock ticking now, before they've even filed all the paperwork.
I don't know about you, but if I had tried to do something like this in college - turn in an assignment in college that I knew was incomplete - I know I would have gotten one of two reactions. If the professor was feeling charitable, I might get an "Incomplete," with instructions to turn in the missing parts before the end of the semester. If not, then the assignment would have received a failing grade.
Seems to me that those options are available to the Obama administration as well. Reject it because the application is premature, and let them file it when they've done the required work.
If the pipeline is a done deal, as the approval of the Oklahoma-to-Houston leg seems to signal, one might, you know, hope the administration would go a little farther, like requiring the TransCanada to set aside a fraction of its profits generated by the pipeline to cover the
inevitable leaks caused when transporting 600,000 barrels of extracted bitumen a day under high pressure over thousands of miles.
And it's not as if anyone expects the pipeline to not leak ever. As Jess Zimmerman said on Grist
It was predicted to leak once every seven years, but instead it leaked 12 times in the first 12 months.
That gives it the dubious distinction of being the leakiest pipeline in America. Personally, I have to admire the chutzpah it takes for TransCanada PR drones to claim that most of the leaks were under 20 gallons, completely discounting the spills in May of last year in Kansas (2,100 gallons) and North Dakota (23,000 gallons). So the "average" (arithmetic mean) spill was actually over 2,000 gallons. (One more argument for better math education.)
Given the likelihood of the Keystone XL pipeline leaking - and the near-certainty that the oil companies would use every means at their disposal to delay taking responsibility - doesn't it make sense to require the oil companies that will make tens of billions of dollars on this pipeline to put up the money to cover the remediation now, rather than try to chase after them when the damage is done?
A worker attempts to save an oil-covered bird after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. Twenty years after the disaster, only nine species are considered recovered (Seattle Times).
This photo from 1989 shows researchers examining a pocket of oil in the intertidal zone of the coast of Alaska. Scientists estimate 16,000 gallons of oil from the Exxon Valdez spil remain buried, 20 years later. Oil from the spill persists and can still be found as far away as the Kenai Peninsula, 450 miles away. (Seattle Times).