Article content continued

Continue reading.

[/np_storybar]

“There is a climate impact from burning 830,000 barrels per day of any crude that cannot be ignored,” according to the report, released by Oil Change International and 350.org, which are jointly seeking to convince President Barack Obama to kill the pipeline. “This is a matter of physics, and not subject to debate.”

The analysis assesses the emissions from producing, transporting, refining and using the oil from the oil sands in Alberta, Canada. The Keystone pipeline being proposed by Calgary-based TransCanada Corp., would carry that oil to across six U.S. states, including Nebraska, to refineries.

The State Department analysis, released March 1, said the pipeline would have minimal impact on climate change because the oil sands would be mined and developed with or without the Keystone pipeline. The environmental groups say that mining and development isn’t inevitable.

“Without Keystone XL, with strong and growing opposition to other tar-sands pipelines, and with continued decline in U.S. oil demand, America simply does not need this extreme source of oil,” the groups said. “And we do not need and cannot afford the additional climate risk of this pipeline.”

The pipeline is designed to carry about 830,000 barrels a day of tar sands oil from Alberta and oil from shale rock formations in the U.S. The administration has previously given approval for the pipeline’s southern leg to relieve an oil glut in Cushing, Oklahoma.

Bloomberg News