by Anthony Swift, via NRDC’s Switchboard

The State Department announced that it has received an application from TransCanada for a Presidential Permit for the northern segment of its proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline that the President rejected back in January.

Keystone XL would carry 830,000 barrels a day of tar sands from Alberta, Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast. Tar sands are the world’s dirtiest form of oil, require a devastating process that lays waste to forests to extract tar sands bitumen, a thick low grade fuel that has significantly higher emissions that conventional crude.

Tar sands pipelines also appear to pose higher risks – both in number and severity of pipeline spills. Keystone XL would grant tar sands a route through America’s heartland on its way to the international market. It would raise U.S. oil prices, put our waters and farms in jeopardy of hard to clean up tar sands oil spills, and would increase our dependence on oil – worsening climate change and undermining efforts to move to clean energy.

A new application means a new review process. The environmental review for the Keystone XL process must evaluate climate, water, land, and health impacts not only of the pipeline, but of the tar sands extraction, refining and end use. The national interest determination for this transboundary energy project has to assess whether the pipeline is really needed to meet U.S. security, economic, environmental or other goals. The world of oil and our understanding of the dangers of tar sands have changed since the first time TransCanada applied for a permit for Keystone XL back in 2008. The process for evaluating this permit request needs to be thorough, rigorous, transparent and free from conflicts of interest.

So once TransCanada reapplies, what can we expect?

Read more

This week, Crossroads GPS announced a $650,000 nationwide television ad campaign called “Deflect.” The 30-second spot falsely blames Obama administration actions for the rise in gasoline prices since 2009.

Crossroads GPS is a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) group, affiliated with the American Crossroads super PAC. Karl Rove has been linked to both groups.

The spot begins by noting gas prices “then and now” — going up from the unusually low prices of January 2009 to the higher prices of today. A narrator asks what has made the difference.

The narrator then claims the reasons for higher gas prices are:

– “President Obama’s administration restricted oil production in the Gulf”

– Limited development of American oil shale

– Obama personally lobbied to kill a pipeline bringing oil from Canada

Watch the spot:

Unlike candidate ad spots, television stations are under no obligation to run ads by outside groups, especially when the ads are factually wrong. This one is.

The non-partisan FactCheck.org outright calls the ad’s claims “bogus.”

Some important points to keep in mind:

– U.S. gas prices do not correspond with domestic oil production. Decades of statistics show domestic gas prices correspond with global gas prices.
– The President is not to blame for rising gas prices. Oil companies, whose profits go up an estimated $800 million a year, every time the price of gas goes up a penny, and speculation are the key reasons for the cost increase.
– Gas prices were unusually low in January 2009. Though prices were much higher at other points during the Bush administration, they were artificially low when President Obama took office because the world economy was reeling from the Wall Street meltdown.
– The temporary moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico came because of the BP oil spill. The Obama administration put the moratorium in place to ensure that new safety precautions could be implemented after the worst oil spill on record poured about 4.9 million barrels of oil into the gulf (millions of barrels that might otherwise have been refined for gasoline).
– The Obama administration has not stymied development of American oil shale. As FactCheck.org notes, “production of petroleum from shale formations is booming. What the administration slowed down were plans for experimental development of ways to produce oil by heating kerogen-rich rocks, something that is years away from becoming commercially feasible.”
– President Obama did not lobby to kill the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. He has supported building part of the pipeline — what has opposed are efforts by Congressional Republicans to deny his administration the time necessary to do a thorough review of the plan. And much of the oil delivered via the proposed pipeline would likely be exported after refinement.

Are the deceitful ads funded by Big Oil? By Keystone XL? Crossroads GPS isn’t telling — they do not publicly disclose their donors. But viewers — and television station executives — would be wise carefully scrutinize this dishonest content, even if they cannot scrutinize the motivation of the people paying for it.

Speaking in Cushing, OK, President Barack Obama touted his administration’s record of a huge boom in the U.S. oil and gas industry, dismissing concerns about accelerating climate change:

We’re opening up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources offshore. We have quadrupled number of operating rigs to a record high. We have added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the earth and then some. So we are drilling all over the place, right now. That’s not the challenge. That’s not the problem.

Watch it:

Obama announced that he is expediting the construction of the southern leg of TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which will connect tar sands and oil shale production from the north to Gulf Coast refineries for tax-free export to foreign markets.

Obama concluded by saying that the “future I want for our kids” is one in which “we’re going to keep on drilling.”

Climate scientists have warned that the prevention of catastrophic climate change would require that 80 percent of known fossil-fuel reserves will have to remain unburned.

by Bill McKibben, via Huffington Post

The president makes a potentially interesting speech today in Cushing, Oklahoma.

It comes amidst a completely unprecedented March heat wave — 2,000 records fell last week as cities like Chicago broke records dating back to the 19th century, and that heat is expected to move towards the eastern seaboard this week; meanwhile, record levels of atmospheric moisture are expected to trigger flooding in Texas and Oklahoma. It comes on the tail of a year when America set a new record for multi-billion dollar weather disasters. And it comes on his first visit to the Sooner State since it set the all-time American record for the hottest summer by any state — the average reading for June, July and August was 86.9 degrees, breaking the old record (also Oklahoma, this time 1934) by an astonishing 1.7 degrees. In other words, if there was ever a moment for talking about global warming, this would be it.

But I’m guessing the president won’t.

My bet is he’ll talk about what’s he’s called his “all of the above” energy policy — about how America has drilled a record number of oil and gas wells during his administration, about how fracking technology has spread around the country. He’ll laud sun and wind, but as supplements to gas and oil, not replacements.

And to make it especially painful to ranchers, indigenous people, and assorted environmentalists, he may do it while standing next to pipe waiting to be laid for the southern half of the Keystone Pipeline, an enterprise he has promised to “expedite.”

Read more

Our guest blogger is David Turnbull, the former director of Climate Action Network – International who is chronicling his month-long road trip across the nation in a hybrid car.

There’s a lot that I could write about today — the way driving on country roads rather than interstates lets you have a feel of the land and country you’re driving by, images of the colorful diner where I had lunch in the middle of nowhere in western Oklahoma, the sublimely random and awesome retro ’80s bar I happened upon tonight in Tulsa, etc etc etc.

But tonight I’m going to focus on one experience: I drove through Cushing, Oklahoma today.

Cushing, for those who don’t know, is known as the “pipeline crossroads for the world.” I’m aware of it because it’s been one of the cities at the center of the Keystone XL pipeline debate. The Keystone XL pipeline would, if constructed, transport the world’s dirtiest oil from Canada through the heartland of America to the Texas coast to be refined and, for the most part, shipped overseas. It’s a terrible project, and the President was right to reject it not once, but twice…and yet it keeps coming back like a zombie waking from the dead. Cushing would be a major point in the pipeline, and even today sits at what could be a crucial junction of the Southern portion, which it seems Obama may unfortunately be ready to push forward.

I drove into Cushing late in the afternoon today. When I got there I decided I’d go see a bit of downtown. There were signs talking about a “historic downtown,” so I figured I’d have a look. What I found was depressing, in as much as any town that’s struggling with hard economic times is depressing.

It’s a town where half of the storefronts are closed and boarded up. The main street, the street that is supposed to be the epicenter of the town: nearly deserted. The few people who were actually walking around looked depressed…but maybe that was just me, projecting my own feelings onto my perception of them.

After a quick tour of downtown Cushing, if you can call it downtown, I drove south of town. To where the oil sits. Read more

Map used to define Nebraska Sandhills doesn’t include nearby areas also vulnerable to contamination

A depth-to-water map of eastern Nebraska, with the original Keystone XL route in orange. Areas in light blue have a high water table (depth to water 0 to 50 feet) and are more vulnerable to an oil spill. Areas in dark blue have a depth to water of over 50 feet. The new route will likely pass through northern Holt County. Credit: Catherine Mann for InsideClimate News, based on a map created by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Conservation and Survey Division. PDF here.

New Keystone XL Route Could Still Threaten Ogallala Aquifer (InsideClimate News)

… while the [Keystone XL oil pipeline's new route through Nebraska] will avoid the Nebraska Sandhills—a region of grass-covered sand dunes that overlies the critically important Ogallala aquifer—it could still pass through areas above the Ogallala, where the water supply is vulnerable to the impacts of an oil spill.

The original Keystone XL would have crossed through 100 miles of the Sandhills on its way from the tar sands mines of Alberta, Canada to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. But TransCanada agreed to reroute it in November, after thousands of Nebraskans joined environmentalists to protest the pipeline’s path over the aquifer.

The aquifer spans eight states and supplies 83 percent of Nebraska’s irrigation water. It’s also connected to the High Plains aquifer, which in many places lies above the Ogallala aquifer. Although residents of the Sandhills technically rely on the High Plains aquifer for drinking and irrigation, most refer to the Ogallala aquifer when talking about their water supply.

“It was always about the water,” said Amy Schaffer, a fifth-generation Nebraskan whose father runs a Sandhills ranch. “This isn’t over until they get [the pipeline] out of the Ogallala aquifer.

Read more

Tuesday, the U.S. Senate voted 57-41 to kill a “drill-baby-drill” amendment by Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) to the transportation bill. His amendment, which would have opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling, bypassed the administration to approve construction of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, opened practically the entire coast of the United States to drilling, and mandated other oil and gas exploration, fell 19 votes shy of the 60 required. The amendment also contained provisions to extend tax cuts.

Fossil-friendly Democratic senators Mark Begich (AK), Joe Manchin (WV), and Claire McCaskill (MO) joined with 38 Republicans to support the measure.

An unusual combination of seven Republicans opposed the measure, along with 50 members of the Democratic caucus. Three — Sens. Scott Brown (MA), Susan Collins (ME), and Olympia Snowe (ME) — represent Democratic-leaning New England states (both Snowe and Collins have previously opposed ANWR drilling).

The unfunded costs of the tax incentives in the bill likely scared off the four Republicans voting no — Sens. Bob Corker (TN), Jim DeMint (R-SC), Mike Lee (R-UT), Marco Rubio (FL) — all politicians who have criticized federal government spending. Like the New England senators, Rubio and DeMint also represent coastal states with vibrant tourism industries and cultures dependent on the beauty of their coastlines, which could be permanently crippled by offshore drilling.

In a statement, Corker said, “Even though I strongly support the Keystone pipeline, having voted for it various times in the past, I could not support this amendment because it violates the Budget Control Act enacted last year.”

It is no surprise that Pat Roberts would push a bill so beneficial to dirty energy companies — after all, his top source of campaign money since 1989 has been Koch Industries, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, with more than $130,000 in individual and PAC contributions.