A Senate vote on the Keystone XL pipeline failed by 1 vote this afternoon. It needed 60 votes to get past a Senate filibuster; the final result was 59-41.
This doesn’t end the Keystone XL debate, though. It’ll probably have enough Senate votes to pass next year. But it’ll still face hurdles. The GOP is unlikely to muster 67 Senate votes to override a presidential veto, and the project also is tied up by litigation in Nebraska courts.
Today’s vote was an effort by the Democratic Senate caucus to save Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana from defeat in next month’s runoff election. She’s from an oil state and supports Keystone. But she was likely to lose her re-election bid regardless of how the Keystone vote went.
Keystone is a political football that pushes emotional buttons on both sides of America’s partisan divide, and there’s a lot of misinformation and disinformation being circulated about it. Based on the best and most objective information available, here’s how I resolve those factual disputes:
1. Keystone XL would contribute nothing to America’s energy independence because it would simply move Canadian tar sands oil to the Gulf coast ports for export.
2. Keystone XL would not be a major job creator. It create several thousand temporary construction jobs for a couple years, and about 50 permanent jobs. (Nowadays, pipelines are largely automated.)
3. Not building it probably won’t affect climate change, because Canadians will just find some other way to ship their oil to other countries.
4. The pipeline poses enhanced environmental risks, compared to oil pipelines generally, because Canadian tar sands oil is more corrosive than other oil and therefore Keystone would be more prone to leaks and spills.
5. The original proposed route crosses the Ogallala aquifer, America’s most important underground water supply, and a sandhill crane nesting area; but these objections can be resolved by using an alternate route. In fact, TransCanada, Keystone’s developer and eventual owner, didn’t expect the original route to be approved and always planned for an alternate route.
6. Even if Keystone XL overcomes the political and legal hurdles, it won’t be economically feasible unless oil prices stay above $65, which is roughly the production cost of Canadian tar sands oil.
7. Keystone has nothing to do with domestic oil fracking, and U.S. fracking production won’t be affected by not building Keystone.
Basically, what it boils down to is, we’d build this pipeline across our territory as a favor to our Canadian friends, and we wouldn’t get much out of it ourselves. I don’t see how one pipeline, more or less, makes or breaks climate change. In that respect, Keystone is more symbolic than anything else. Its final capacity, after all construction is completed, would amount to less than 1% of global daily oil consumption. That’s not going to tip the climate balance one way or the other. So you shouldn’t believe the environmental hype about it. But you shouldn’t believe the job creation or energy independence hype, either. The rhetoric is overdone on both sides. I think the real issue is compelling TransCanada to use an alternate route that bypasses the Ogallala aquifer and crane nesting area.