With U.S. President Barack Obama expected to deny a permit to the Keystone XL pipeline this fall, Canada’s oil industry is looking for someone to blame.

The National Post’s Claudia Cattaneo wrote last week that “many Canadians … would see Obama’s fatal stab as a betrayal by a close friend and ally” and that others “would see it as the product of failure by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government to come up with a climate change plan.”

The latter is the more logical conclusion. Obama has made his decision-making criteria clear: he won’t approve the pipeline if it exacerbates the problem of carbon pollution.

Even the U.S. State Department’s very conservative analysis states the Keystone XL pipeline would “substantially increase oilsands expansion and related emissions.” The Environmental Protection Agency has agreed.

While Canada’s energy reviews take into account “upstream benefits” — such as jobs created in the oilsands sector as a result of pipelines — they don’t even consider the upstream environmental impacts created by the expansion of the oilsands.

For all the bluster and finger-pointing, there’s no covering up the fact that Canada’s record on climate change is one of broken promises.

Oil and Gas Regulations Promised Since 2006

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has promised since 2006 that he’ll regulate oil and gas emissions. Those regulations still haven’t materialized nearly a decade later —and there’s only one person to blame for that.

In recent years, Harper has taken the approach that Canada can’t regulate its oil and gas sector unless the U.S. does too. This argument is fundamentally flawed.

First, it presumes that Canada should outsource its climate policy to another country. On issues from health care to acid rain, Canada has moved independently from the U.S. and prospered as a result.

Secondly, copying U.S. climate policy has never really made sense from a greenhouse gas perspective because the countries have very different emissions profiles.

Chiefly, the oil and gas sector only accounts for about three per cent of U.S. emissions, so it isn’t a top priority for the country to regulate. Instead, the U.S. is focused on reducing emissions from power plants — including coal and natural gas-fired electricity — which account for one-third of emissions.

In Canada, the oil and gas sector accounts for nearly 25 per cent of Canada’s emissions, hence the need for a focus on that sector when addressing emissions.

What’s more, while coal-fired power plant emissions in the U.S. are already dropping, oilsands emissions are projected to more than double from 2010 to 2020, making them Canada’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gas pollution.

Canada and the Copenhagen Accord: More Broken Promises

Let’s not forget: when Canada has aligned itself with the U.S. on climate commitments, it has broken those promises.

As part of the 2009 Copenhagen agreement, both countries agreed to reduce their carbon emissions by 17 per cent by 2020.

The U.S. has implemented a plan to meet those commitments by aggressively tackling its biggest source of emissions (coal-fired power plants), along with a range of other actions, including taking on methane emissions, which account for the majority of emissions from its oil and gas sector.  

Meantime, Canada is on track to substantially miss its Copenhagen commitments, due in large part to its unchecked support of oilsands expansion.

Instead of actually addressing growing emissions from the oilsands sector, the Canadian government has focused on PR — spending millions to lobby internationally for approval of new pipelines and undermining clean energy policies in Canada, the U.S. and the European Union. More than that, the federal government has eliminated environmental protections and undermined public review processes.

Harper would have better served the interests of all Canadians (including the oil industry) by investing that time and energy into writing climate regulations, instead of sticking his head in the sand.

Harper Treats Climate Change as Race to Bottom

All in all, it’s little wonder that Obama is expected to refuse the Keystone XL pipeline when Harper has treated Obama’s chief concern, climate change, as a race to the bottom by employing the faulty logic that because we can’t solve the whole problem, we should do nothing.

If our leaders had employed that same logic in the 1940s, Canada would never have sent troops to the Second World War, where Canadians accounted for just two per cent of the Allied effort.

After a summer of unprecedented wildfires and drought across North America, it’s never been more apparent that climate change is already costing us all.

Citibank just released a new report showing that taking action now against the growing threat of climate change would save $1.8 trillion by 2040. And yes, that report takes into account the potential lost revenue from leaving resources in the ground — including 80 per cent of coal reserves, half of the world’s gas reserves, and a third of global oil reserves — and still concludes that the global economy would see a net gain.

While the fossil fuel industry continues to pay off pseudo scientists and unethical PR firms to create confusion about climate change, the science is clear. And the time to act is now.

The federal government’s utter failure on climate change has given rise to fruitless, polarized pipeline debates, such as the prolonged one over TransCanada’s Keystone XL. The only person who can be blamed for that is Harper himself.

Main image: A 2009 Greenpeace billboard calls on world leaders to secure a fair, ambitious and binding deal at the Copenhagen Cimate Summit. Via Flickr.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

A letter submitted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the State Department gives new weight to concerns the proposed $8 billion Keystone XL pipeline, destined to carry crude from the Alberta oilsands to export facilities along the Gulf of Mexico, will have significant climate impacts.

The EPA letter suggests existing analyses – which downplay the importance of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the project – are out of date and require revision in light of low global oil prices.

Due to the plummeting of oil prices and related market changes “it is important to revisit [the] conclusions” of previous reports, EPA told the State Department.

“Given recent large declines in oil prices and the uncertainty of oil price projections, the additional low prices scenario in the (State report) should be given additional weight during decision making, due to the potential implications of lower oil prices on project impacts, especially greenhouse gas emissions.”

The State Department is due to release a revised analysis of the Keystone XL project and is currently gathering comments from the EPA and other agencies.

A recent report in the journal Nature singled out the oilsands as one of the world’s carbon deposits that must remain in the ground if global temperatures are to remain within the 2 degrees Celsius warming limit recommended by policy makers and scientists.  

Construction of the Keystone XL pipeline is dependent on a steady flow of oil from the estimated 160 billion barrels in the oilsands. Yet the drop in prices has recently led to abandoned projects and major cuts to the workforce. Suncor, the oilsands’ largest operator, recently announced it will eliminate 1,000 jobs, Shell Canada will cuts its workforce by 10 per cent and Cenovus Energy confirmed its investment in the area will drop by 25 per cent.

A Republican-led Congress is attempting to force approval of the Keystone XL pipeline with new legislation, although President Barack Obama has been clear about his plan to veto any bills that would allow construction to begin.

In 2013, Obama indicated his final decision on the pipeline will come down to the project’s climate impact, saying “our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.”

In its letter to the State Department this week, the EPA said carbon emissions from the pipeline — which has the capacity to carry 830,000 barrels of oil per day — would add up to the equivalent of 5.7 million new passenger vehicles on the road.

“Over the 50-year lifetime of the pipeline, this could translate into releasing as much as 1.37 billion more tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” the letter states.

Alberta premier Jim Prentice travelled to Washington, D.C. this week to lobby Congress and the Obama administration to approve the pipeline.

Prentice recently told NPR that Alberta “has the most exacting standards around in terms of carbon emissions, the regulatory framework that surrounds industrial emissions.”

When it comes to the venting and flaring of gasses with high warming potentials like methane, Prentice said, “in all these areas, I think we’re world class.”

Yet the EPA seems to have come to its own conclusion regarding Alberta’s greenhouse gas regulations, stating, “until ongoing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of oil sands are more successful and widespread…development of oil sands crude represents a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions.”

Canada currently has no regulation to limit emissions from the oil and gas industry, and recently Prime Minister Stephen Harper said it would be “crazy” to introduce such rules.

The EPA letter notes “oil sands crude has significantly higher lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than other crudes” and that the use of oilsands crude creates emissions 17 per cent greater than the use of crude refined in the U.S. on a well-to-wheels basis.

Premier Prentice argued Canada will continue to move crude to the U.S. with or without the Keystone XL pipeline, suggesting rail will pick up the slack. In its letter the EPA appears to agree with this point, suggesting oilsands producers would likely stomach the high cost of rail transport.

But the letter goes on to point to the additional risks associated with transporting large quantities of bitumen, which “can have different impacts than spills of conventional oil.” A recent government-commissioned study in Canada acknowledges there are large gaps in existing knowledge when it comes to the effects of bitumen spills.

Concerns over the pipeline route, especially in Nebraska, requires greater spill preparedness and a clear commitment from TransCanada that the company will assume responsibility for any spills and remediation should a release occur. Spills remain “a concern for citizens and businesses relying on groundwater resources crossed by the route,” the EPA letter notes.

Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, called the letter a “damning report” and said with it, “the president’s got every nail he needs to finally close the coffin on this boondoggle.”

Image Credit: Kris Krug

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Did the Obama administration's decision on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline just get delayed again? Quite possibly, since the State Department Inspector General announced today that it has delayed until January the release of its review of the scandals surrounding Environmental Resources Management, Inc., the contractor chosen by TransCanada to perform State's Keystone XL environmental review. 

Although the State Department was evasive about whether the IG's announcement signals a delay in the administration's decision, it would seem odd for President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to decide on the fate of the KXL export pipeline without waiting for the results of this critical report.  

Bloomberg News and The Hill broke the news about the delay, and all signs point to the fact that State's "inquiry" has morphed into a thorough conflicts-of-interest investigation into ERM's financial ties to TransCanada and other scandals. 

Ever since the March 2013 release of the State Department's environmental impact statement, critics have pointed to ERM Group's historical ties to Big Tobacco, its green-lighting of controversial projects in Peru and the Caspian Sea, and its declaration that a tar sands refinery in Delaware made the air "cleaner," among many other industry-friendly rulings.  

Worst of all, perhaps – and potentially in violation of federal law – ERM Group lied on its State Department contract, claiming it had no business ties to TransCanada and the tar sands industry. The facts showed otherwise. 

This latest development certainly raises the prospect of a further delay, if not another sign that the Keystone XL will be rejected by President Obama.   

Image credit: Kris Krug

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

As the public anxiously awaits the U.S. State Department’s final decision on the fate of the Keystone XL Pipeline, the discussion has largely ignored the elephant in the room: the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA.)

Thanks to NAFTA, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1994, the State Department will likely be able to do little more than stall the pipeline’s construction. In its simplest form, NAFTA removes barriers for North American countries wishing to do business in or through other North American countries, including environmental barriers. The goal of the agreement was to promote intra-continental commerce and help the economies of all involved in the agreement.

Before diving into NAFTA, it's important to take a look at what the State Department and the media have done so far in regards to Keystone XL. Before she left office and was replaced by John Kerry, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s ties to the project were almost too many to count. Most notable was the fact that many of her former staffers and associates were lobbyists for Keystone, and they had a direct line into both Clinton and President Obama.

It is likely a result of these connections that the State Department’s environmental assessments were strikingly flawed and inadequate.  As the NRDC pointed out, many of the so-called “standards” that the State Department put in place regarding the pipeline were simple “smoke and mirror” schemes to distract the public, and they failed to do their due diligence by considering alternative paths for the pipeline. Furthermore, climate impacts from operation and construction were almost completely ignored.

Compounding the problem of the State Department’s willingness to sign off on their own flawed environmental studies was the fact that the mainstream media was more than willing to host Keystone XL proponents to tout the many “benefits” that America would experience by constructing the pipeline.

Chief among those alleged “benefits” was the talking point regarding job creation. The media, as well as the public, bought into the industry’s talking points that 20,000 jobs would be created through construction of the pipeline. TransCanada eventually downgraded that number to 6,000 permanent jobs, but the media hardly paid attention. More recently, the fact that the pipeline would create only 35 permanent jobs in America was met by complete silence from the mainstream media, leaving the public woefully ignorant about the true “benefits” of the pipeline. 

The other major talking point used to sell the pipeline was that it would reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil, and reduce oil prices for Americans. This talking point, while widely accepted again by both the media and the public, was completely at odds with reality. The reason TransCanada wants a pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast is so that the oil can be refined and immediately loaded onto tankers to sell in overseas markets. This tar sands oil would not be staying in America, and therefore would not reduce our depedence on foreign oil.

Furthermore, the fact that the oil would be sold overseas means that prices in America would actually rise, rather than fall, by as much as 12 cents per gallon. 

All of this misinformation helped convince the public that the pipeline is a great idea, as no major media outlets bothered to follow up and report the facts.  Recent polls show that the majority of Americans, including majorities of Republicans and Independent voters, favor construction of the pipeline. 

With all of these factors working in TransCanada’s favor, an approval from the State Department would seem to be an absolute certainty. 

But if the State Department chooses to acknowledge the facts and prohibit the pipeline’s construction, TransCanada still has a fairly simply route to get it approved, and that’s where NAFTA comes into play.

When it comes to the energy sector, NAFTA has a lot to say, and most of it isn’t good. At the heart of it, NAFTA mandates that member countries cannot discriminate against foreign energy companies.

This means that a Canadian energy company is legally allowed the same opportunities as American companies operating in the U.S. Since we’ve allowed our oil companies to construct pipelines, it would be illegal, in most circumstances, to deny that same privilege to TransCanada.

Furthermore, NAFTA significantly weakens the host government’s ability to restrict a project, even if that project would violate the government’s own regulations and standards. For example, Exxon has been successful in bringing NAFTA challenges to drilling projects that the Canadian government had denied the oil giant. 

However, just as NAFTA could be used as the means by which Keystone XL is approved, it could just as easily be the tool by which it is stopped.

The glimmer of hope comes from a provision in NAFTA that created the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). The CEC is tasked with ensuring that environmental concerns are thoroughly examined when dealing with NAFTA. It lays out environmental issues as they would apply to the entire continent, not just the host government’s concerns. These broad terms could easily help make Keystone XL a distant memory, as the environmental consequences of a spill could span the continent. Specifically, a leak in the portion of the pipe that would still pass over the Ogallala aquifer could poison as much as 25% of America’s crops, which are exported throughout North America.

While environmental challenges to NAFTA projects have a poor success rate, it still gives hope that the project will be denied.

American politicians are still pushing the President to unilaterally approve the Keystone XL pipeline, while opponents were able to gather more than 1 million public comments against the pipeline. 

Given the volatility of the issue, it wouldn’t be surprising if the President and State Department left the decision up to a NAFTA panel, rather than stepping up and doing the right thing for North America.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.