Tar sands extraction in Alberta

Ben LeFebvre at Politico reports that the Trump regime will approve the permit requested by TransCanada Corp. to build the northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline, reversing President Obama’s decision to reject it:

The move by the State Department comes 16 months after Obama blocked construction of the 1,200-mile pipeline, which would ship crude from Canada's western oil-sands region to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The pipeline became the subject of major lobbying efforts by both oil industry supporters and environmental groups, which turned the project into the focus of their climate change campaigns. Undersecretary for political affairs Tom Shannon plans to sign the pipeline’s cross-border permit on or before Monday, the last day for the 60-day timeline that President Donald Trump ordered in January. Secretary of State and former Exxon Mobil Chief Executive Rex Tillerson recused himself from the process.

Just days after his inauguration, Pr*sident Trump signed an executive order to push construction of KXL and the Dakota Access Pipeline, which is being built to carry shale oil from the Bakken Formation of North Dakota and Montana to Illinois refineries.

The 36-inch KXL pipeline is slated to carry up to 830,000 barrels a day (34.9 million gallons) from a depot in the heart of tar sands territory at Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Nebraska, where it will link up with the southern leg of the pipeline, completed in 2014, to carry oil in the form of diluted bitumen—dilbut—to Port Arthur, Texas, on the Gulf Coast. Several times during his campaign and in his executive order, Trump said KXL would be required to use U.S.-made steel to build the pipeline. But that, like so many of the man’s promises, was cast aside.

Extracting and refining oil from the tar sands generates about 20 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil, which was one of several reasons opponents, including farmers and ranchers, indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States, and environmental advocates, fought against approval of the pipeline for several years. Some foes have objected to the pipeline on the grounds that it sets into place new infrastructure with a 60-year lifespan at a time when the world needs to be working to accelerate the transformation of its fossil-fuel-based energy system into one that is carbon-free.