Winterization installs energy-efficient windows

The recently released Senate and House budget resolutions for fiscal year 2014 reflect diametrically opposed visions of American’s energy and climate futures. The Senate budget invests in clean energy technologies that reduce carbon pollution responsible for climate change. The House budget, on the other hand, ignores climate change and defunds clean energy technologies.

The proposed Senate budget resolution — “Foundation for Growth: Restoring the Promise of American Opportunity,” authored by Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) — would boost the United States into the 21st century by investing in the clean energy industry, which will be a $1.9 trillion market from 2012 through 2018. In addition, the Senate resolution would attack the carbon pollution that is responsible for climate change.

Michael Linden, Director for Tax and Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress, noted that Sen. Murray’s overall budget “would promote immediate job creation, lay the foundations for future broad-based growth, and responsibly pursue deficit reduction.” The Murray budget’s funding proposals would also help address the fundamental challenges of clean energy development and slow climate change.
Meanwhile, the House budget resolution — “The Path to Prosperity: A Responsible, Balanced Budget,” written by House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) — would continue investment in the dirty fossil fuels of the past while disinvesting in clean energy. And it ignores the looming disruptive and expensive threat of climate change.

Reducing oil dependence and carbon pollution from transportation

Traffic congestion in the United States, partly due to damaged roads and inadequate access to public transit, wastes 2.9 billion gallons of gasoline annually, or nearly 196,000 barrels of oil per day, according to the latest Urban Mobility Report published by the Texas A&M University Transportation Institute. The study also estimated that “additional carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions attributed to traffic congestion: 56 billion pounds—about 380 pounds per auto commuter.”

Sen. Murray’s budget would eliminate some of this oil waste and carbon pollution by investing $50 billion in “repairing our nation’s highest priority deteriorating transportation infrastructure … [including] fixing crumbling roads, bridges … [and] updating our mass transit.” Her budget would also provide “$10 billion to create an infrastructure bank that will leverage investment from the private sector” for additional road and transit projects.

Conversely, the Ryan budget would increase oil use and carbon pollution by slashing investments in transportation below current levels.

Fighting climate change and investing in clean energy technology

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So the American Petroleum Institute is out with more ads that feature “person on the street” interviews with ordinary Americans. You know, the kind of folks that go to bed at night worried about those mean people in Washington threatening to take away the billions in tax breaks currently enjoyed by the fossil fuel industry.

Leaving aside the substance — that high gas prices are already enriching oil companies on top of their tax breaks, and the industry has enjoyed hundreds of billions in government support for a very long time — you have to wonder how ads like this get made in the first place. Do those folks really walk around on the street, and a camera pops up in front of them, and they blurt out deep-seated and authentic desires to protect aggrieved mega-corporations?

Greenpeace investigated this in 2011, and got some audio evidence of the direction these “people on the street” receive from the directors.

The people who appear in the ads are assured that : “... all they do is the director feeds them the lines and he talks them through it.” As a result, they end up saying crazy things like “I think taxing the oil and gas industry does nothing but harm the country” on national television.

So keep that in mind when you see the people in these ads: It’s more profiteering through puppeteering than any genuine concern about energy costs.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) released his fiscal year 2014 budget yesterday. Once again, he offers a path to prosperity that is limited to corporate special interests like Big Oil.

Despite nearly two-thirds of Americans echoing President Obama’s push to tackle climate change through regulation, Ryan decided to concentrate his energy strategy on “restoring competition to the energy sector” and “stopping the government from buying up unnecessary land.” Unsurprisingly, Ryan has multiple cases of misinformation and at times, blatant lies.

Let’s break down the eight biggest falsehoods from Ryan’s energy vision:

1. “The construction of the Keystone XL Energy Pipeline would create more than 20,000 direct jobs and 118,000 indirect jobs while battling the high cost of gas.”

Contrary to Rep. Ryan’s claims, the Keystone XL pipeline would actually only support 35 permanent and 15 temporary jobs after construction is complete, with “negligible socioeconomic impacts,” according to the State Department’s revised draft environmental impact assessment.

2. “Once it was in operation, the pipeline would contribute an additional $5.2 billion in property taxes to communities along the route during the life of the pipeline.”

The TransCanada assessment that claims that the six states crossed by the pipeline would receive an additional $5.2 billion in property taxes fails to account for the likely damage caused by oil spills along the pipeline route. “In the past five years, more than half a million barrels of oil and other hazardous liquids have been spilled from U.S. pipelines, killing 76 people and causing some $2.4 billion in property damage, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.”

3. “The administration continues to penalize economically competitive sources of energy and to reward their uncompetitive alternatives. On the one hand, it pours money into its favored industries.”

According to an analysis by DBL Investors, the oil and gas industry has received a total of $446 billion in government subsidies from 1918 through 2009. Meanwhile, the renewable energy industry received just $5.5 billion from 1994-2009. U.S. taxpayers have invested $80 in oil for every $1 invested in clean, renewable energy. Moreover, the big five oil companies –BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell — made a combined profit of $118 billion in 2012 while Reuters reported that the three American companies’ tax payments were “a far cry from the 35 percent top corporate tax rate.”

4. “In 2012, the Congressional Budget Office found total energy subsidies were $24 billion, of which $16 billion were spent on ‘green’ energy programs and $2.5 billion on fossil fuels.”

Ryan actually misquoted the report, which actually refers to subsidies from 2011. Furthermore, the Congressional Budget Office found that the government only spent $3.6 billion on energy efficiency and renewables in 2011.

5. “Many of the administration’s loan-guarantee projects have failed.”

Independent analysis of the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program has shown that that these investments were not only successful, but cost-effective. Despite the hysteria behind Solyndra, the program will cost $2 billion less than initially expected, for a total cost of $2.7 billion. To put that in perspective, the fossil-fuel industry got a whopping $70 billion in government subsidies from 2002 to 2008. The Loan Guarantee Program has allowed extremely important projects to move forward, including the world’s largest wind farm and our country’s biggest concentrating solar power project. Critically, the program created jobs for nearly 60,000 people.

6. “Beyond Solyndra, the latest ill-fated ventures include a $737 million loan guarantee to Solar Reserve for a 110-megawatt solar tower on federal land in Nevada and a $337 million guarantee for Mesquite Solar 1 to develop a 150-megawatt solar plant in Arizona.”

Politico reported that both of these projects are either already generating power or are on schedule with construction.

SolarReserve’s 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes project, near Tonopah, Nev., has inked a 25-year agreement to sell electricity to the power company NV Energy. The project is on track for completion later this year…. Ryan’s other target, the Mesquite Solar 1 project west of Phoenix, flipped the switch to electricity generation earlier this year. Media reports described it at the time as a success story of the DOE loan guarantee program.

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American families have been plagued by higher oil and gasoline prices over the past several years despite a significant increase in domestic oil production and a decline in consumption. But while high gas prices threaten the economy and family budgets, they enrich oil companies with huge profits. Apparently that doesn’t bother House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), since his proposed fiscal year 2014 budget resolution appears to again keep a decade’s worth of oil tax breaks worth $40 billion for the oil-and-gas industry. Even more astounding, the budget would give the five biggest oil companies an additional multibillion-dollar tax cut by slashing the corporate income tax rate.

Rep. Ryan’s latest budget is a retread of the budget, complete with oil giveaways, that he and Republican presidential nominee and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney ran on in 2012 — and which was soundly rejected by voters in November. Hasn’t Rep. Ryan learned anything?

Big Oil companies continue to rake in the profits, while gasoline prices have risen by 38 cents since January 1 of this year — an 11 percent increase. What’s more, the Energy Information Administration reported that U.S. households spent an average of $2,912 on gasoline in 2012. This is the highest level in four years, equivalent to nearly 4 percent of the average household income before taxes. Last year the average gasoline price was $3.66 — a dime more than the previous record set in 2011. Time magazine reported in December that “2012 will go down as the most expensive year ever for gas.”

While higher gasoline prices cause families pain at the pump, they are a boon to the world’s largest oil companies. The big five oil companies — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell — made a combined record profit of $118 billion in 2012 on top of a record profit of $137 billion in 2011. These companies also have a total of nearly $72 billion in cash reserves. Yet under the Ryan budget, it seems that the big five oil companies would continue to benefit from their $2.4 billion share of the $4 billion in annual tax breaks for all large oil and gas companies.

In addition to the apparent retention of these existing special tax breaks, Rep. Ryan’s FY 2014 budget explicitly includes the Romney presidential campaign’s economic plan proposal to cut the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent — nearly a one-third reduction. That could provide an additional combined tax cut of at least $2.3 billion annually to the big five oil companies, according to an analysis of their 2011 public financial statements. That includes $1.5 billion for the three domestic oil companies and $800 million for the two foreign-owned companies. Since it is of course impossible to predict their future profits, this estimate is based on their 2011 financial data, including their U.S. federal income tax expense.

Of course Big Oil and the American Petroleum Institute, their wealthy lobbying organization, trot out a number of specious arguments to keep existing tax breaks in place, such as:

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Kulluk oil rig after running aground. Photo: U.S. Coast Guard

By Kiley Kroh

This week a top executive with Norway-based Statoil said it would be willing to walk away from Arctic offshore drilling if exploration in the harsh and remote environment proves too risky.

In an interview at the IHS CERAWeek conference in Houston, Tim Dodson, Statoil’s executive vice president of global exploration, acknowledged the numerous challenges associated with Arctic offshore drilling and reiterated his company’s cautious approach to exploration in the region.

After spending $23 million on Chukchi Sea leases in 2008, Statoil had planned to begin drilling in 2014, but delayed those plans by a year after watching Shell’s struggle to comply with safety and environmental standards and navigate the challenging conditions — all before drilling into any oil-bearing zones. Now, Dodson said, that may be pushed back even further:

We’ve [said] we wouldn’t drill before 2015. Whether that means we drill in 2015, or maybe not until 2016 or whether we’d drill at all, I think maybe the jury’s still a little bit out on that.

One key reason for Statoil’s reluctance to rush into Arctic offshore operations is the cost involved. Shell has spent approximately $5 billion on equipment and preparations, only to see its state of the art oil spill response equipment “crushed like a beer can” in a routine test off Puget Sound. And both of the company’s specialized Arctic drilling rigs were so badly damaged in accidents last year that Shell will tow them to Asia for substantial repairs — delaying its own exploration plans until at least 2014.

In the aftermath of Shell’s debacles, the Department of the Interior is nearing the end of a 60-day review of the company’s Arctic Ocean drilling program, the results of which are expected as soon as the end of this week.

While the potential for reward may be great, the risk of Arctic offshore drilling is tremendous. First, the remoteness of the region and its glaring lack of infrastructure necessary to respond to a potential oil spill or marine accident significantly complicate the industry’s ability to prove its preparedness. Next, the volatile conditions in which any company would be operating — including long periods of darkness, fog, hurricane-force winds, massive swells, and ice-infested waters for the majority of the year — further compromises safety and preparedness.

And the private sector has taken notice. Insurance giant Lloyd’s of London released a report last year warning companies that responding to an oil spill in a region “highly sensitive to damage” would present “multiple obstacles, which together constitute a unique and hard-to-manage risk.” German Bank WestLB announced last year that it would not provide financing to any offshore oil or gas drilling in the region, saying “the risks and costs are simply too high.” And Total SA, the fifth largest oil and gas company in the world, announced it wouldn’t seek to drill in the Arctic because an accident there would be a “disaster.”

Despite Shell’s temporary hiatus and Statoil’s caution, the debate over oil and gas exploration in the U.S. Arctic Ocean is far from over. Both Shell and ConocoPhillips have affirmed their intention to begin exploratory drilling in 2014. As the Center for American Progress’ Chair John Podesta stated in reaction to Shell’s recent announcement, “One company hitting the pause button will not mitigate the risks involved; the Department of the Interior should hit the stop button to prevent any oil and gas drilling from taking place in the Arctic Ocean.”

Kiley Kroh is the Associate Director for Ocean Communications at the Center for American Progress.

By Jessica Goad

The United States is in the midst of an energy boom, seen for example in the rise of U.S. oil production to its highest level in 20 years. But this hasn’t stopped the oil and gas industry from clamoring for more access to public lands for drilling, and from criticizing the Obama administration for “[putting] in place more obstacles” and setting public lands “off-limits” to development.

For example, Senator David Vitter (R-LA), Ranking Member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, even went so far as to state, “There’s no disputing the fact that our nation’s domestic energy production on federal lands has been stymied by this administration.”

But a new report released today by the Denver-based Center for Western Priorities called “Follow the Oil” shows that putting the blame on the president and his administration is nothing more than conservative messaging.  Much of today’s boom in oil and natural gas is from unconventional shale “plays,” areas that have only recently been opened through new technology.  And, as the report notes:

Nationwide, 90 percent of all current shale gas plays exist on nonfederal lands, with only 10 percent located on federal lands. Even starker, almost all shale oil resources exist on non-federal lands. Only 7 percent of current shale oil and mixed plays are found on federally-owned lands with the remaining 93 percent on nonfederal lands.

This map shows what those findings look like across the country, and where the industry is “following the oil”:

Additionally, economics are playing a role in driving drilling from public lands to nonfederal lands.  As the report states, “rapid development increased the supply of natural gas, driving down prices, and sending companies searching for other drilling locations and revenue sources.”

In other words, the oil and gas industry has met the enemy, and it is itself.

The release of this report comes at a very opportune time, considering that Sally Jewell, nominee to be the next Secretary of the Interior, will have her confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee this week

And as expected, key members of the committee are preparing to ask her questions about how the administration is stifling drilling on public lands. For example, Energy and Environment Daily reports that Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) will ask Jewell “where she stands on domestic energy development, job creation and federal regulations.”

Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), the Ranking Member on the committee, said she told Jewell in a meeting last week about “resource potential in Alaska, off-shore and in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the limitations to access.”

And Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) released a statement after Jewell’s nomination announcement that “The [Interior Department’s] approach has hurt our economy, killed jobs, and prevented states like Utah from generating critical revenue,” so questions about energy on public lands are also likely to come from him.

The report released today shows that, despite all of the questions Jewell may get on drilling on public lands, the industry in the end is “following the oil” to nonfederal lands.

Jessica is the Manager of Research and Outreach for the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Cross-posted from Huffington Post

Given the relentless “all of the above” energy strategy pursued by the Obama Administration, the release this past Friday of a positive environmental impact report for the proposed Keystone oil pipeline was no big surprise. The U.S. State Department essentially declared that since the extra-dirty tar sands oil designated for the pipeline was going to be shipped and burned one way or another, building the pipeline down from Canada to Gulf coast refineries would not have that much impact on the environment — despite warnings from climate scientists that burning all the tar sands oil would be “game over” in the fight to stop climate change.

This conclusion by the State Department was a laughable bit of self-fulfilling logic. But perhaps the biggest surprise in the report was the tacit admission that the tar sands oil isn’t going to be burned in the U.S. at all. Instead, it is destined for refining and export overseas.

The State Department report details how Gulf Coast oil refineries will use the tar sands crude oil delivered by Keystone to replace supplies from Venezuela and Mexico, refine the crude into high-end products like gasoline, and then export the refined fuel overseas. Meanwhile, as if to add insult to injury, fuel prices paid by U.S. consumers in the Midwest are expected to jump as the pipeline will siphon off crude oil supplies that are currently landlocked in America. The U.S. State Department did not, of course, highlight these findings at the top of its report but instead buried them down in the “market analysis” section, where it left a clear trail of breadcrumbs.

Interestingly, the State Department went way out of its way to argue that the pipeline won’t be used to export unprocessed crude oil. (Though the industry clearly expects otherwise: see here.) Yet at the same time, the State Department admits, using painstakingly disconnected phrasing, that the crude oil delivered by the pipeline will be processed by Gulf coast refineries and then exported, in a shell game whereby export refineries replace declining crude oil supplies from Venezuela and Mexico with Keystone Canadian tar sands oil.

Regarding the pipeline’s impact on the export of refined crude, the State Department report says: “…future refined product export trends are also unlikely to be significantly impacted by the proposed Project.”

And what exactly are those trends? The State Department reports that: “In 2005, exports began increasing… Export volumes have increased to over [3 million barrels of oil per day] in the first half of 2012. This increased volume of refined products is being exported by refiners as they respond to lower domestic gasoline demand and continued higher demand and prices in overseas markets.”

And why use the extra dirty crude oil to be delivered by the Keystone Pipeline? The State Department says: “Gulf Coast refiners’ traditional sources of heavy crudes, particularly Mexico and Venezuela, are declining and are expected to continue to decline. This results in an outlook where the refiners have significant incentive to obtain heavy crude from the oil sands.”

And there you have it, a shell game, with Keystone as the lynchpin for the whole effort. Gas prices go up for Midwesterners, big oil refineries profit from the overseas export of fuel processed from dirty tar sands oil, and the rest of us are that much further in the hole in our fight to stop climate change. The environmental impact statement appears to be a clear signal that the Obama Administration is headed down the road to approval. However, the growing backlash against the pipeline creates a headache for the president who just made a very public commitment to protect the climate. A fight is clearly in the works.

– Hunter Cutting is a consultant and writer.

Automatic across-the-board budget cuts will take hold on Friday, affecting job growth, state education programs, environmental agencies, and women’s health programs. The sequester actually shares an important anniversary — with Big Oil tax breaks. It is not as well-known a date, but one type of deduction, the percentage depletion allowance, celebrates its 100-year anniversary today.

Depletion allowances let oil companies treat the oil in the ground as capital equipment, and thus allows them to write off a certain percentage for each barrel that comes out. (See more here.)

The year 1913 marked the first time a Big Oil subsidy was written into the tax code. The Revenue Act of 1913 allowed oil companies to write off 5 percent of the costs from oil and gas wells beginning March 1 of that year. (For reference, see pages 172-174 of the Act.) A century later, oil companies can now deduct three times this rate, at 15 percent, although the very largest companies no longer qualify. The percentage depletion subsidy also increases when prices are high, at the same time that oil companies enjoy greater profit. It can even eliminate all federal taxes for independent producers.

A Center for American Progress report estimated that closing this tax break would save $11.2 billion over 10 years.

President Obama has called on Congress to eliminate the percentage depletion allowance, along with a series of other tax breaks totaling $4 billion annually. Even Ronald Reagan once asked for the same in a 1985 speech on tax reform:

“Under our new tax proposal the oil and gas industry will be asked to pick up a larger share of the national tax burden. The old oil depletion allowance will be dropped from the tax code except for wells producing less than 10 barrels a day. By eliminating this special preference, we’ll go a long way toward ensuring that those that earn their wealth in the oil industry will be subject to the same taxes as the rest of us.”

However, congressional Republicans taking the lion’s share of oil and gas industry contributions have refused to close century-old loopholes in order to raise revenue. A number of specialized Big Oil tax breaks allow the top oil companies to cut their tax bill dramatically, sometimes half (or less) of the top corporate rate. It is not as if Big Oil is struggling: Last year, the five largest oil companies — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil — earned $118 billion profit at a time when consumers paid record-high gas prices. This haul follows after a year the companies earned a record $137 billion profit.

By Shiva Polefka, Michael Conathan, and Kiley Kroh

In November 2012, BP settled the Justice Department’s criminal case against it in the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, agreeing to pay $4.5 billion in fines and admit it was guilty of 11 counts of manslaughter. But that 10-figure deal was just the tip of the iceberg.

Yesterday, the civil trial to assess BP’s violations of the U.S. Clean Water Act began in New Orleans, a process that will end with additional fines that could exceed four times that amount.

The civil trial will determine responsibility for an unprecedented environmental disaster, in which BP’s high-pressure Macondo well ruptured and discharged nearly 5 billion gallons of crude oil in to the Gulf of Mexico — as well as the amount of fines the company must pay to the U.S. Federal government, Gulf Coast states, and municipalities for violations of federal environmental law.

If Federal District Judge Carl J. Barbier agrees with the Justice Department that BP was grossly negligent in its handling of the blowout and oil spill, the London-based oil giant could face more than $17 billion dollars in federal fines under the Clean Water Act. While this would be a record fine under the statute, it corresponds to the unprecedented scale of the environmental disaster the company caused, because responsible parties are charged per barrel of oil spilled. And it would still be significantly less than the $26 billion in profit BP amassed in 2011 alone.

In addition, Gulf Coast states are seeking more than $34 billion in damages under the U.S. Oil Pollution Act, which was passed in response to Exxon’s 1990 spill in Valdez, Alaska. The OPA explicitly authorizes U.S. states to impose their own fines and penalties on parties deemed responsible for oil spills that affect them.

Continuing its effort to shift blame for the accident, BP argues that it was not grossly negligent, and that its contractors Halliburton and TransOcean instead share significant responsibility for the spill. TransOcean, from whom BP leased the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, settled with the Justice Department in November of 2012, admitting criminal and civil violations and agreeing to pay $1.4 billion in fines.

BP’s latest trial follows its settlement last fall of the US government’s criminal case against the company. In that agreement, BP pled guilty to 14 criminal counts stemming from accident, including manslaughter in the deaths of 11 oil rig workers that were killed when safety equipment failed, and the oil rig exploded and sank. BP also admitted to obstruction of Congress, for purposefully providing lawmakers with estimates of oil-discharge rates 10-times lower than what they knew was occurring. As part of the criminal settlement, BP agreed to pay $4.5 billion over 6 years.

Thanks to the RESTORE Act, which Congress passed and President Obama signed into law as part of a larger transportation bill in 2012, 80 percent of the civil fines paid by BP and other responsible parties will go directly to the affected Gulf Coast states to fund economic and environmental recovery — rather than going to the U.S. Treasury — making the ultimate decision in the current case a critical one for ecosystem and economic restoration in the Gulf. Analysis by the Center for American Progress indicates that by allocating the penalties to ecosystem restoration in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, the RESTORE Act will create thousands of jobs supporting and restoring industries that were devastated by the Deepwater Horizon disaster — such as tourism and fishing, which are cumulatively worth more than $25 billion per year to these states.

The first phase of the trial is expected to take three months, and will result in assignment of percentages of blame among the responsible parties. Reportedly, Judge Barbier has insisted he won’t let the trial drag on for years as occurred following 1989’s Valdez spill.

With funding to restore damaged ecosystems along the Gulf Coast hanging in the balance, Judge Barbier’s sense of urgency is welcome and warranted. Gulf Coast residents and the American public deserve a prompt, decisive and just resolution.

Shiva Polefka is the Ocean Program Research Associate, Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy, and Kiley Kroh is the Associate Director of Ocean Communications at the Center for American Progress.

Cross-posted from the Sierra Club

After a weekend during which tens of thousands of Americans took to the streets to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline and demand solutions to the climate crisis, the American Petroleum Institute (API) is touting a one-sided poll they claim shows Americans supporting the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline.

However, a closer look at their poll questions unveils a biased survey which failed to equip respondents with the basic facts of the project before asking them to form an opinion. Instead, API crafted a poll to ensure they got the types of answers they were looking for by totally ignoring the environmental and economic realities of the toxic pipeline from Canada.

You can see the questionnaire for yourself here (PDF). And you’ll notice that poll respondents are presented with all types of arguments for the pipeline, but not a single argument against Keystone XL. In fact, the survey doesn’t even mention the words “tar sands” at all. Without the proper context, people who had never heard of Keystone XL before could easily associate the pipeline with conventional oil — not the toxic, more carbon-intensive tar sands oil that Keystone XL would transport. Furthermore, there is no mention of the grave risks Keystone XL poses. API’s survey ignores any discussion of possible oil spills, drinking water contamination, or climate-disrupting pollution — just to name a few.

The poll also primes respondents to believe that Keystone XL tar sands oil is destined for the U.S. marketplace — rather than noting that it is effectively an export pipeline that pumps tar sands oil through the U.S. to get to the global marketplace. By failing to mention that much of the tar sands oil coming through Keystone XL will be shipped overseas, the survey allows respondents to assume that this oil is destined for the United States and will improve our energy security.

Here’s the kicker: Polling conducted by Hart Research last year showed that once American voters hear both the pro and con arguments about the Keystone XL pipeline, they support President Obama’s decision to deny the permit for the pipeline by a 47 percent to 36 percent margin. This poll, which surveyed 1,000 voters in the swing states of Colorado, Michigan, Iowa and Ohio, showed that voters were especially worried about the risks to water quality and supplies from tar sands pipeline spills. Moreover, the arguments of API and other Keystone XL supporters were found to be much less powerful once voters learned that much of the tar sands oil will be exported and consumed overseas.

API’s polling instrument is incomplete and one-sided, so it’s difficult to take any meaning from it — though that doubtlessly won’t stop API from declaring it as “proof” Americans want this project. But what this poll is “proof” of is that it’s easy to win a one-sided debate. But Americans deserve to know these critical — and basic — facts about Keystone XL before being asked to form an opinion about it.

– Grace McRae, Sierra Club Polling and Research Strategist