Environmentalists seem to think they can prevent the development of Canada's oil-rich tar sands, and that their rallies against Keystone XL will keep that carbon in the ground. They can't, and it won't. America's largest trading partner will simply build a pipeline to the Pacific coast from Alberta and sell its petroleum products to Asia instead, China in particular.
Such green delusions are sad, and Mr. Obama's pandering is sadder, though everything the country stands to lose is saddest. If Mitt Romney and the other GOP candidates have any political wit, they'll vindicate the Keystone's "national interest" and make Mr. Obama explain why job creation is less important than the people who make a living working for the green anti-industrial complex.
Those are the final paragraphs of a piece in Thursday's Wall Street Journal on the purely political decision issued by President Obama in rejecting the permits for the Keystone XL Pipeline project.
In reality, Canada will sell its oil to China and other markets overseas, instead of continuing to be our strongly loyal trading partner.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in a telephone call yesterday, told Obama “Canada will continue to work to diversify its energy exports,” according to details provided by Harper’s office. Canadian Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver said relying less on the U.S. would help strengthen the country’s “financial security.”
The “decision by the Obama administration underlines the importance of diversifying and expanding our markets, including the growing Asian market,” Oliver told reporters in Ottawa.
Currently, 99 percent of Canada’s crude exports go to the U.S., a figure that Harper wants to reduce in his bid to make Canada a “superpower” in global energy markets.
This decision - political pandering by Team Obama at its worst - has not gone unnoticed by our loyal partner, Canada:
The Keystone decision is the latest of several U.S. moves that have irked Canadian policy makers. Canada objected to “Buy American” provisions in the Obama administration’s $447 billion jobs bill that was blocked by Republicans in Congress, as well as the restoration of a $5.50 fee on Canadian travelers arriving in the U.S. by plane or ship.
Approval of Keystone is a “no-brainer,” Harper said in a Sept. 21 interview with Bloomberg.
To Team Obama, one man's re-election is more important than the energy needs of our country. President Obama went to his default position when he makes a bad decision - he blamed Republicans for it. He intended all along to kick the decision down the road until after his re-election bid and now he simply looks even weaker as a leader than before. This pipeline project has been in the works for several years now.
Pipeline approval has been pending since September 2008, when TransCanada Pipelines Ltd. applied for permission to build it. Because 1,384 miles were to be built in the United States, the State Department reviewed the application.
Although the State Department gave Keystone a positive environmental assessment last August, in November it announced that approval would be delayed until the first quarter of 2013, pending the study of alternative routes.
The panderer-in-chief had to chose between two hardcore Democratic special interest group, the unions and the environmental lobby, and he chose the environmental lobby at the expense of jobs creation and employment of blue collar workers. Ideology over the middle class. It didn't have to be this way. The studies are in and the environmental concerns have been addressed. Obama simply chose to allow the State Department to take the fall for his own indecisive leadership.
We all lose.
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