After years of polit­i­cal jostling, envi­ron­men­tal groups cel­e­brat­ed Pres­i­dent Obama’s Nov. 6, 2015, rejec­tion of the Key­stone XL pipeline. ​“Amer­i­ca is now a glob­al leader when it comes to tak­ing seri­ous action to fight cli­mate change,” he said.

The State Department authorized these projects even as the Obama administration was making its celebrated "pivot” toward acting on climate change.

As he spoke, anoth­er pipeline known as the Alber­ta Clip­per was already trans­port­ing some 800,000 bar­rels per day (BPD) of tar sands crude — the same type and essen­tial­ly the same vol­ume of oil as the pro­posed Key­stone — to U.S. refineries.

While Key­stone has monop­o­lized pub­lic out­rage, the State Depart­ment has qui­et­ly allowed a sim­i­lar project to move ahead. The Clip­per is one link in a broad­er net­work of pipelines, oper­at­ed by Cana­di­an oil giant Enbridge, Inc., that extends from the Alber­ta tar sands all the way to refiner­ies on the Gulf Coast. Envi­ron­men­tal groups warn that this could lead to a dra­mat­ic increase in the pro­duc­tion of tar-sands oil — one of the dirt­i­est and most envi­ron­men­tal­ly haz­ardous types of fuel— with lit­tle pub­lic scrutiny

Key­stone and the Clipper

Key­stone and the Alber­ta Clip­per, or Line 67, were both pro­posed at rough­ly the same time for the same pur­pose: trans­port tar sands oil from the Alber­ta tar sands to the Unit­ed States in huge quan­ti­ties. But while Key­stone was con­demned to reg­u­la­to­ry pur­ga­to­ry and even­tu­al­ly blocked, the Clip­per and its asso­ci­at­ed projects have been allowed to go ahead.

Keystone’s biggest reg­u­la­to­ry lia­bil­i­ty was the fact that it was a sin­gle 2,000-mile long stretch of pipeline that would cross a nation­al bor­der and var­i­ous state bound­aries. The fact that it stretched across both Cana­da and the Unit­ed States meant both gov­ern­ments would have to agree to the envi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive project, while its sheer scale meant it was bound to attract unwant­ed atten­tion and controversy.

Enbridge, mean­while, appears to have deft­ly avoid­ed these prob­lems. Rather than one mas­sive pipeline project, Enbridge has instead built or pro­posed many small­er, seem­ing­ly dis­parate pipeline projects from the Upper Mid­west southward.

The Alber­ta Clip­per, or Line 67, is the cen­ter­piece of Enbridge’s cross­bor­der pipeline net­work. The chal­lenge of exploit­ing Alber­tan tar sands oil is that it is not only rel­a­tive­ly remote, but land-locked. Upon extrac­tion, it has to be trans­port­ed to be refined, processed and export­ed. This was the pur­pose of the Clip­per, which was meant to move the oil from the Alber­ta tar sands across the U.S.-Canada bor­der to a dis­tri­b­u­tion ter­mi­nal in Supe­ri­or, Wis­con­sin. How­ev­er, under fed­er­al law, any infra­struc­ture project that cross­es a U.S. bor­der first requires a fed­er­al per­mit and an accom­pa­ny­ing envi­ron­men­tal review — the same process that doomed Keystone.

A brief his­to­ry of the Clipper

Enbridge’s legal maneu­ver­ing began from the start. In 2007, the com­pa­ny pro­posed, and the State Depart­ment approved, a per­mit for the Clip­per to oper­ate strict­ly at 450,000 bar­rels per day (BPD) — even though Enbridge had built the pipeline with a design capac­i­ty of almost dou­ble that.

When the State Depart­ment car­ried out an envi­ron­men­tal impact state­ment (EIS) for the project, it only con­sid­ered the poten­tial impact of the first, small­er capac­i­ty — not the pipeline’s full capac­i­ty. Sev­er­al envi­ron­men­tal groups chal­lenged the per­mit in court in 2009 on the basis that the EIS was inad­e­quate. Accord­ing to those involved, it was known that Enbridge aimed to use the pipeline’s full capac­i­ty down the line.

“Enbridge had already made it clear to investors that that was the plan,” says Doug Hayes, staff attor­ney with the Sier­ra Club, who was involved in the orig­i­nal lawsuit.

Nonethe­less, Enbridge denied they had any cur­rent plans to expand, and the judge sided with them and the State Depart­ment. The per­mit for 450,000 BPD was allowed to pro­ceed. By Octo­ber 2010, Line 67 was oper­a­tional and was send­ing this quan­ti­ty of tar sands oil over the Canadian‑U.S. bor­der — around the same time Key­stone XL began to cap­ture nation­al attention.

Despite its denials, two years after Line 67 was up and run­ning, in Novem­ber 2012, Enbridge informed the State Depart­ment that it did indeed wish to oper­ate the pipeline at its full design capac­i­ty of 800,000 BPD, for which it would need a new per­mit. This time, how­ev­er, it would have to go through the process in a post-Key­stone America.

In the two years since the Alber­ta Clip­per began trans­port­ing oil, Key­stone had gone from a lit­tle-known project to a full-fledged polit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy. Anti-Key­stone pro­test­ers had been arrest­ed out­side the White House, and celebri­ties like Mark Ruf­fa­lo and Julia Louis-Drey­fus were speak­ing out against the pipeline.

Sure enough, Enbridge began to feel the pres­sure. Crowds of pro­test­ers turned out for Minnesota’s Pub­lic Util­i­ties Commission’s pro­ceed­ing on the pipeline, and there was mas­sive involve­ment in the first pub­lic com­ment peri­od held by the State Depart­ment in 2013.

On top of this, the per­mit­ting process for the Clip­per dragged on for more than a year with no progress. Enbridge had already applied for approval from Stephen Harper’s oil-friend­ly Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment to start push­ing 800,000 BPD of crude through the 670 miles of Line 67 that lay on Canada’s side of the bor­der. It just need­ed the State Department’s approval for the project to go ahead.

“Enbridge saw what hap­pened to Key­stone XL and some of these oth­er pipelines, and … they decid­ed to avoid this pub­lic review process,” says Hayes.

The Clip­per ​“switcheroo”

It was at this point, in 2014, that Enbridge switched tack and uti­lized what some envi­ron­men­tal activists have called an ​“ille­gal switcheroo.” Instead of rely­ing on Line 67 to trans­port 800,000 BPD of crude oil across the U.S.-Canada bor­der, the com­pa­ny would briefly divert the crude to anoth­er exist­ing pipeline called Line 3. This seg­ment would then trans­port the oil across the bor­der before it was ulti­mate­ly trans­ferred back to Line 67 in Minnesota.

In June 2014, Enbridge’s lawyers out­lined the project in a let­ter to the State Depart­ment. They cit­ed the more than year-long ​“unfore­seen Line 67 project per­mit­ting delay” as the rea­son for the project, but also pre­sent­ed Enbridge as a cus­to­di­an of the pub­lic inter­est. The com­pa­ny had a duty to ship­pers and refin­ers, they explained, who would be hit with high­er trans­porta­tion costs if Enbridge didn’t step up its capac­i­ty, as well as to ordi­nary con­sumers, who might see domes­tic oil prices spike. Enbridge’s lawyers wrote that the com­pa­ny would pro­ceed with this plan ​“whether or not a new Pres­i­den­tial Per­mit is issued.”

This dubi­ous maneu­ver relied on what crit­ics say was an addi­tion­al sleight of hand: anoth­er new seg­ment of pipeline to car­ry the crude across the bor­der, pack­aged as an update to Line 3. In Feb­ru­ary and March 2014, Enbridge informed the State Depart­ment it planned to under­take a ​“main­te­nance-dri­ven replace­ment” of the near­ly 50-year old Line 3, which stretched from Edmon­ton to Supe­ri­or. But rather than swap­ping it with an iden­ti­cal but improved replace­ment, it pro­posed an entire­ly new pipeline of a larg­er diam­e­ter that would trav­el through a dif­fer­ent route for 238 miles.

To com­plete the plan, Enbridge would con­struct four total­ly new pipeline inter­con­nec­tions between Line 67 and its new ​“replace­ment” Line 3: two at the company’s Gret­na, Man­i­to­ba sta­tion in Cana­da, and two more in the Unit­ed States just south of the border.

Because Enbridge already reg­u­lar­ly con­struct­ed inter­con­nec­tions between adja­cent lines ​“in the event of unfore­seen events or con­tin­gen­cies, such as pow­er out­ages or main­te­nance,” it argued, it didn’t need a per­mit for these interconnections.

Ulti­mate­ly, the State Depart­ment acced­ed to these changes with­out requir­ing new per­mits or envi­ron­men­tal reviews. In Novem­ber 2014, a coali­tion of trib­al and envi­ron­men­tal groups filed suit against the depart­ment, claim­ing that it had vio­lat­ed fed­er­al preser­va­tion and envi­ron­men­tal laws and call­ing for an injunc­tion on the bypass project until it went through the full per­mit­ting process.

Emails between Enbridge’s lawyers and the State Depart­ment, made pub­lic in April 2015 as part of the suit, show staffers appar­ent­ly work­ing to help Enbridge tip­toe around regulations.

“Enbridge needs to do the hor­i­zon­tal drilling under the 2 rivers in the bor­der seg­ment for Line 3 … two weeks from now,” Ona Hahs, attor­ney-advi­sor for the State Department’s Office of the Legal Advi­sor told State staff in one email. ​“So we’re run­ning out of time on that one.”

On Decem­ber 9, the fed­er­al judge ruled in favor of Enbridge and the State Depart­ment, argu­ing that the State Department’s deci­sion is not sub­ject to judi­cial review. For the groups who filed the suit, one option will be to appeal the decision.

As with Key­stone, Oba­ma or the State Depart­ment could step in and tell Enbridge it needs a per­mit to keep pump­ing 800,000 BPD of oil over the bor­der. If left to their own devices, they’re unlike­ly to do so.

“Through the Key­stone cam­paign, Amer­i­ca learned that it could fight pipelines,” says Andy Pear­son, Minnesota350’s Mid­west tar sands co-ordi­na­tor. ​“The nor­mal has changed. You’re not going to be able to put a pipeline with­out fac­ing oppo­si­tion, any­where in the country.”

In the mean­time, Enbridge has already com­plet­ed con­struc­tion of the new bor­der seg­ment that con­nects to the Alber­ta Clip­per, which, since mid-2015, has allowed the com­pa­ny to trans­port increased vol­umes of tar-sands crude over the bor­der with­out fur­ther delay.

In an emailed state­ment, Enbridge spokesper­son Lor­raine Lit­tle told In These Times: ​“The Unit­ed States Depart­ment of State is well aware of our replace­ment of Line 3 at the bor­der for main­te­nance rea­sons and has advised us that that replace­ment was con­sis­tent with our exist­ing Line 3 per­mit and requires no fur­ther approval and/​or envi­ron­men­tal review by the Depart­ment. … Our oper­a­tion of Line 67 at the bor­der is like­wise ful­ly con­sis­tent with the capac­i­ty allowed for that line by the exist­ing pres­i­den­tial per­mit. Fur­ther, the Depart­ment has acknowl­edged that is has no reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ty beyond the area near the bor­der and our inter­con­nects are locat­ed out­side that area, thus rais­ing no ques­tion as to their legality.”

Enbridge’s end game

Ken Rumelt, staff attor­ney at Ver­mont Law School’s Envi­ron­men­tal and Nat­ur­al Resources Law Clin­ic, says that Enbridge’s endgame has always been clear: Even though projects have been pro­posed piece­meal, they con­sti­tute one large net­work capa­ble of ramp­ing up trans­port of Cana­di­an tar sands to the Gulf Coast. More than 50 per­cent of U.S. refin­ing capac­i­ty and most of U.S. heavy crude pro­cess­ing capac­i­ty is locat­ed on the Gulf.

To that appar­ent end, Enbridge has a num­ber of oth­er pipeline projects either already in exis­tence or in the works, which form links in this net­work. The rest of the Line 3 replace­ment, for one, is due to go online in 2017, at which point it will open up a new cor­ri­dor for tar sands oil to flow in through the Upper Midwest.

Then there’s Line 61, a huge, 42-inch pipeline built in 2007 that runs from Supe­ri­or to Flana­gan, Ill. Enbridge want­ed to triple its cur­rent­ly approved capac­i­ty to a mas­sive 1.2 mil­lion BPD, which would make it the largest tar sands pipeline in North Amer­i­ca. Rather than build­ing anew, Enbridge plans to sim­ply pump more oil through the pipeline, and in Sep­tem­ber 2015 it was final­ly able to break ground on the 13th and final addi­tion­al pump­ing sta­tion. The expan­sion is expect­ed to go online in sum­mer 2016. Enbridge also has plans to build a ​“twin” for Line 61 to help car­ry the flood of extra oil pumped by the Line 3 expansion.

The final links in this tar sands chain have been around for some time. Two pipelines will run near­ly 800,000 BPD from Flana­gan to Cush­ing, Okla., where they link up with Enbridge’s 500-mile long Sea­way pipeline and its 850,000 BPD capac­i­ty ​“twin.” These pipelines extend all the way to the Gulf Coast.

Two days before Obama’s Key­stone rejec­tion, Enbridge announced plans to build import and export facil­i­ties at the Gulf of Mex­i­co region. With Con­gress and Pres­i­dent Oba­ma hav­ing lift­ed the Unit­ed States’ 40-year ban on oil exports in Decem­ber, Enbridge is now per­fect­ly posi­tioned to export tar sands oil through the Gulf.

“It’s Key­stone times two,” says Rumelt.

Enbridge’s incre­men­tal approach to pipeline build­ing, crit­ics charge, has helped obscure its endgame of con­nect­ing the pipelines into one vast trans­porta­tion net­work. By only propos­ing small local and inter­state projects, Enbridge has skirt­ed the much more strin­gent fed­er­al reg­u­la­tion process, while also keep­ing pipeline fights local­ized and out of the nation­al press.

This strat­e­gy has worked. Tran­sCana­da fought and lost a very pub­lic, five-year long bat­tle with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment over Key­stone. When was the last time you heard about Enbridge’s pipelines?

Stonewalling and seizures

To get these projects off the ground, Enbridge has often resort­ed to under­hand­ed tactics.

“Enbridge has a his­to­ry of strong arm­ing indi­vid­ual landown­ers … threat­en­ing emi­nent domain and a slew of oth­er threats and forms of intim­i­da­tion,” says Eliz­a­beth Ward, the Sier­ra Club’s con­ser­va­tion pro­grams coordinator.

Emi­nent domain, the seizure of pri­vate prop­er­ty with­out the owner’s con­sent for pub­lic use, has tra­di­tion­al­ly been employed by the gov­ern­ment for the ​“pub­lic use” of land, such as build­ing high­ways or schools. In 2004, how­ev­er, the Supreme Court ruled that pri­vate enti­ties could also be grant­ed this pow­er if their plans brought ​“pub­lic ben­e­fit” — in oth­er words, if they cre­at­ed jobs or brought oth­er eco­nom­ic gains. While Enbridge prefers to nego­ti­ate with landown­ers over the fair price of their prop­er­ty, if they dis­pute the price or refuse to sell, the com­pa­ny can use emi­nent domain to take it — a tac­tic it has a his­to­ry of using.

The com­pa­ny has also been accused of stonewalling envi­ron­men­tal groups, local tribes and com­mu­ni­ties, and, in some cas­es, gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies, keep­ing projects under a strict veil of secre­cy. Sev­er­al peo­ple I spoke with have said the com­pa­ny out­right refus­es to engage with them about their concerns.

A help­ing hand from government

The degree to which local and fed­er­al gov­ern­ments have been com­plic­it in approv­ing these projects also rais­es questions.

The State Depart­ment was autho­riz­ing Enbridge’s ​”bypass project” at the same time the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion was mak­ing its much cel­e­brat­ed ​“piv­ot” toward act­ing on cli­mate change. In May 2014, two months before the State Depart­ment approved the project and one month after it allowed the Line 3 replace­ment to go ahead, the Wash­ing­ton Post quot­ed aides and advis­ers who claimed Oba­ma viewed cli­mate change as ​“one of the key com­po­nents of his lega­cy.” ​“This is per­son­al for him,” said one.

That same month, the White House put out a report warn­ing of the cat­a­stro­phe ahead if cli­mate change wasn’t curbed. Lat­er that year, Oba­ma used the occa­sion of the G20 sum­mit for a dress­ing down of Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter Tony Abbot over his inac­tion on cli­mate change. Mean­while, in Feb­ru­ary 2014, John Ker­ry, the head of the same State Depart­ment that bent over back­wards for Enbridge, declared cli­mate change ​“the great­est chal­lenge of our generation.”

In fact, Doug Hayes cred­its the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion with cre­at­ing the ​“turn­ing point” for pipeline building.

In the midst of his reelec­tion cam­paign in 2012, Oba­ma gave a speech in Cush­ing, Okla., boast­ing that, under his admin­is­tra­tion, Amer­i­ca had ​“added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encir­cle the Earth and then some.” The same day, he issued an exec­u­tive order cut­ting the time involved in the fed­er­al per­mit­ting and review process for infra­struc­ture projects. Since then, says Hayes, fed­er­al agen­cies have reg­u­lar­ly seg­ment­ed oil pipelines when review­ing them and tak­en the nar­row­est view of their own juris­dic­tion, in order to avoid the need for envi­ron­men­tal reviews.

Joe Plumer, attor­ney for Ojib­we of the White Earth Nation in Min­neso­ta, asserts that state agen­cies haven’t helped either. Rather than reg­u­lat­ing Enbridge’s projects, Plumer says, the Min­neso­ta Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion has been rub­ber stamp­ing them for years.

Oppo­nents say it’s the same across the bor­der in Wis­con­sin. The Line 61 expan­sion had faced steep oppo­si­tion from the res­i­dents of Dane Coun­ty, which had passed a local ordi­nance requir­ing Enbridge to pur­chase extra insur­ance to cov­er the coun­ty in case of a spill aris­ing from the project. For­tu­nate­ly for Enbridge, Gov. Scott Walker’s ® gov­ern­ment slipped a last minute amend­ment into the state bud­get, extend­ing the pow­er of emi­nent domain to Enbridge and over­rul­ing the county’s ordinance.

Anger at this state of affairs is grow­ing. On June 6, 5,000 pro­test­ers took part in the Tar Sands Resis­tance March in St. Paul, part­ly aimed at the Clip­per. Two months lat­er, 100 pro­test­ers from a coali­tion of envi­ron­men­tal groups staged a more than four hour-long protest out­side John Kerry’s house in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., where 20 pro­test­ers were arrested.

More dra­mat­i­cal­ly, on Novem­ber 2, a broad alliance of pro­test­ers staged a sit-in at Enbridge’s office in Duluth, Minn. Two indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers attempt­ed to hand Enbridge staff a let­ter of demands, which includ­ed ceas­ing the Bypass Project. The Enbridge staff phys­i­cal­ly refused to accept the let­ter, lead­ing the pro­test­ers to slide the let­ter beneath a locked door. Lat­er that day, Enbridge issued a state­ment say­ing it would ​“con­tin­ue to engage in con­ver­sa­tions with indi­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties in areas where we have oper­a­tions or active projects.”

Activists see rais­ing the pro­file of Enbridge’s projects to a Key­stone-like lev­el as essen­tial to stop­ping it. Mah­yar Sorour, an orga­niz­er at the Min­neso­ta Pub­lic Research Group and one of those involved in the protests, says the key will be to turn the Clip­per and its asso­ci­at­ed projects into large-scale issues with impact beyond the Mid­west. She notes that the Clip­per cross­es twice through the Mis­sis­sip­pi riv­er, which near­ly 15 mil­lion Amer­i­cans rely on as a source of freshwater.

The trou­ble with tar sands

Enbridge’s pipelines have a slew of oth­er poten­tial envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive con­se­quences, chief among them the dan­ger of spilling tar sands oil.

Tar sands crude is a mix of sand, clay, water and bitu­men, an extreme­ly heavy type of oil often com­pared to molasses or peanut but­ter. Bitu­men is so heavy, in fact, it can only flow if heat­ed or mixed with lighter types of oil, which often turn out to be car­cino­gens. Long­stand­ing health con­cerns are asso­ci­at­ed with the stuff. Numer­ous stud­ies have linked tar sands to can­cer, and res­i­dents liv­ing near one bitu­men site in Alber­ta com­plained of symp­toms such as spasms, headaches, mem­o­ry loss and pains as a result of heavy oil odors.

The acute den­si­ty of bitu­men makes clean­ing it up a Her­culean labor. The exist­ing tech­nol­o­gy for clean­ing up oil spills assumes that oil floats in water. But bitu­men typ­i­cal­ly sinks to the bot­tom of what­ev­er water body it spills in, mix­ing in with rock and sed­i­ment, mak­ing it hard to scoop out and neces­si­tat­ing dredg­ing. The result is a cost­lier and more dif­fi­cult clean-up operation.

This is all the more alarm­ing when con­sid­er­ing where Line 67 alone runs through. The pipeline not only tra­vers­es pri­vate­ly owned land, threat­en­ing the homes and liveli­hoods of prop­er­ty own­ers — it also cross­es a num­ber of eco­log­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant sites. Aside from the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er, this includes the North­ern Divide, a key junc­ture from which water flows to the Great Lakes and the Hud­son and Mis­sis­sip­pi Rivers, and the Chippe­wa Nation­al For­est, loca­tion of Minnesota’s five largest lakes, site of eight of its last remain­ing wet­lands and home to the high­est breed­ing pop­u­la­tion of bald eagles in the low­er 48 states.

Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties are espe­cial­ly impact­ed. Enbridge’s pipelines go through the Fond du Lac, Red Lake Nation and Leech Lake Indi­an Reser­va­tions, today the home of the Ojib­we peo­ple. Pipelines also trav­el through the region’s wild rice lands, cen­tral to both the indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties’ liveli­hoods and their cul­tur­al iden­ti­ties. Accord­ing to tra­di­tion, the Ojib­we orig­i­nal­ly trav­elled to and set­tled in the region because of its wild rice beds, which became a sta­ple of their diet. An oil spill would dev­as­tate these wild rice beds, not to men­tion rav­age the land on which the Ojib­we have hunt­ing and fish­ing rights.

Enbridge’s his­to­ry is rid­dled with spills. More than 800 have occurred across the company’s oper­a­tions between 1999 and 2010. The Clip­per itself leaked 125 bar­rels worth of oil last year at a Cana­di­an pump­ing sta­tion. The trans­port of tar sands makes spills espe­cial­ly likely.

“Tar sands is like liq­uid sand­pa­per,” says Plumer. ​“It wears the pipe out from the inside.”

To see the poten­tial con­se­quences of a spill, one need only look at what hap­pened in 2010, when a spill on one of Enbridge’s Michi­gan pipelines poured more than 1 mil­lion gal­lons of tar sands crude into the Kala­ma­zoo Riv­er, result­ing in the most expen­sive onshore clean up in U.S. history.

Once in the water, the dilut­ed bitu­men sep­a­rat­ed, with the nat­ur­al gas liq­uids that were blend­ed into the mix con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the sur­round­ing air and the bitu­men sink­ing to the riv­er bed. A com­bi­na­tion of a slow and inad­e­quate response by the EPA and a botched clean-up effort by Enbridge has meant that the riv­er is still con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed today. Near­by res­i­dents were forced to evac­u­ate and many still haven’t returned, while Enbridge, unable to clean the tox­ic air, resort­ed to sim­ply buy­ing up some of the aban­doned homes.

A new direc­tion on cli­mate change?

The exploita­tion of tar sands oil has broad­er impli­ca­tions than these more imme­di­ate envi­ron­men­tal impacts. In the glob­al effort to halt cat­a­stroph­ic warm­ing of the plan­et, keep­ing tar sands in the ground is vital.

Tar sands oil is one of the dirt­i­est forms of fos­sil fuels that exists. Because of its com­plex and ener­gy-inten­sive extrac­tion and sep­a­ra­tion process­es, pro­duc­ing dilut­ed bitu­men ends up burn­ing 8 to 24 per­cent more car­bon than con­ven­tion­al oil. Accord­ing to the Nation­al Resources Defense Coun­cil, an aver­age open-pit mine spits out as much green­house gas every day as do 1.35 mil­lion cars. John Abra­ham, a pro­fes­sor of ther­mal sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of St. Thomas in Min­neso­ta, believes that burn­ing all the Alber­tan tar sands oil — which com­pris­es an area the size of Flori­da — would by itself raise the world’s tem­per­a­ture by 0.4 degrees Cel­sius.

In oth­er words, for the sake of the plan­et, the Alber­ta tar sands have to stay in the ground.

“[The oil indus­try] only has a few lim­it­ed pipelines that can get this stuff out of Cana­da and into oth­er mar­kets,” says Lena Mof­fitt, direc­tor of the Sier­ra Club’s Dirty Fuels cam­paign. ​“The Alber­ta Clip­per is one of only two ded­i­cat­ed tar sands pipelines in exis­tence right now.”

If oil prices con­tin­ue to stay low, this could make exploit­ing the tar sands sim­ply uneco­nom­i­cal for com­pa­nies like Enbridge.

“It’s such a high cap­i­tal invest­ment,” says Doug Hayes. ​“The break even point is so high that if oil prices are low and there’s not these cheap pipeline trans­porta­tion options on the mar­ket, they are going to cur­tail production.”

Sure enough, a State Depart­ment review found that, since trans­port­ing oil by rail is more expen­sive than via a pipeline, tar sands demand would drop if the price for a bar­rel of oil fell below $65. The price of oil this year has already fall­en to less than $50 a barrel.

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma may have put it best, when he reject­ed Key­stone: ​“Ulti­mate­ly, if we’re going to pre­vent large parts of this Earth from becom­ing not only inhos­pitable but unin­hab­it­able in our life­times, we’re going to have to keep some fos­sil fuels in the ground rather than burn them,” he said.

Halt­ing the Clip­per could be crit­i­cal to this end. And for­tu­nate­ly, Keystone’s fail­ure has shown that enough pres­sure can force the gov­ern­ment to do the right thing.

A short­er ver­sion of this arti­cle appears in the Jan­u­ary 2016 issue of In These Times.