Environmentalists contend that extracting oil from Alberta’s oil sands, also called “tar sands,” would accelerate global warming while posing a danger to vulnerable habitats along the pipeline route. Relying on oil from the region, as opposed to conventional crude, results in a 15 percent increase in greenhouse gases.
“By no means is this fight over, though we had a nice day yesterday,” said Melinda Pierce, deputy director of national campaigns for the Sierra Club, an advocacy group.
The Sierra Club and its allies are working to defeat a proposal floated by Obama on Wednesday that would add capacity between Cushing and refineries in Port Arthur, Tex.
At the same time, they are targeting proposals by a Canadian company, Enbridge, to reverse the flow of a pipeline that runs from Houston to Cushing and one that runs from Portland, Maine, to Sarnia, Ontario. Both changes would boost the shipment of the oil sands crude to U.S. facilities.
On Wednesday, Enbridge chief executive Pat Daniel expressed concern that the Obama administration’s decision could, by example, jeopardize his company’s Northern Gateway project, which would carry oil sands crude from Alberta into British Columbia.
“To have that project turned down for the reasons being indicated is horrible for our industry, and it’s a horrible precedent,” Daniel said at an investment conference. “It only will embolden those opposed to [the Northern Gateway project] and other new project developments.”
Indeed, 350.org, a group which mobilized more than 1,200 climate activists to get arrested in front of the White House, is now mobilizing voters in swing states.
Daniel Kessler, a 350.org spokesman, wrote in an e-mail that the group would “build an army so strong that it will not allow a national politician to set foot in a swing state without being met by hundreds of climate activists demanding that politicians ‘Make Polluters Pay’ and end taxpayer subsidies to fossil fuel companies.” He said the group planned to fight Enbridge’s Northern Gateway proposal and push television networks to ask presidential candidates “about the climate crisis.”
“Short-term the impact of Obama’s decision will not be very great,” said Robin West, president of PFC Energy, noting that oil can still be moved by truck or rail. But, he added, ”long-term, if there’s going to be this North American unconventional energy renaissance, which we think is real because the resources are there and the industry is ready to invest, the one thing that can stop it is if you can’t get the infrastructure in place.”
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