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Harper’s pitch met with silence
Gary Park For Petroleum News
Stuck between his pursuit of “clean energy” and his need to achieve “energy security,” President Barack Obama is remaining coy about TransCanada’s plans for a crude pipeline from the Alberta oil sands to the Texas Gulf Coast.
He kept tightlipped about his feelings on the 510,000 barrels per day Keystone XL extension of the existing Keystone system to Cushing, Okla., during a news conference Feb. 4 with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, when the Canadian leader made an open pitch for the project.
The controversial US$12 billion pipeline has evolved into a showdown between advocates of the economic and security benefits to the U.S. and those who want nothing to do with so-called “dirty oil” from Canada.
Keystone XL has been in limbo for six months as the State Department ponders whether to grant a presidential permit allowing construction to begin.
Harper said he impressed on Obama the “reality” that the U.S. will need far more oil than it can produce for “some time” to come, regardless of what progress is made on developing cleaner energy sources.
In a candid evaluation, he said the choice for the U.S. “is whether to increase its capacity to accept such energy from the most secure, most stable and friendliest location it can possibly get, which is Canada, or from other places that are not as secure, stable or friendly to the interests and values of the U.S.”
No comment from Obama Obama made no attempt to comment either way on Harper’s pitch, although others in the U.S. have joined the debate.
Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, sent a letter to Obama Feb. 4 urging him to approve Keystone XL for economic reasons, estimating the project would create 342,000 direct and indirect jobs between 2011 and 2015.
“Other countries are securing their energy futures and we need to do the same,” Gerard said.
That followed a report to the U.S. Department of Energy by consulting firm EnSys Energy that said a reduction of 4 million bpd in U.S. demand over the next 20 years combined with increased U.S. imports from Canada could “essential eliminate” Middle East crude imports, but it did not specifically tie Keystone XL to that forecast.
Liz Barratt-Brown, senior attorney with the Washington-based Natural Resources Defense Council, said the EnSys report reinforced her group’s view that the pipeline will not be needed until well after 2020 — more than enough time to find alternative fuel sources and avoid building an environmentally-harmful pipeline.
Harper gained support for his Keystone XL position from Michael Ignatieff, leader of the federal Liberal party, who told reporters Feb. 4 that “you never catch me using dirty oil language.”
He said Alberta, with its oil riches, is one of the “drive-trains” of Canada’s economy and its future.
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