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President Barack Obama’s latest critique of the Keystone XL oil pipeline still leaves a path for approving the project — but its supporters may need to make concessions to blunt its impact on the climate, analysts said Monday. Obama’s remarks to The New York Times echoed some of the most potent criticisms offered by Keystone’s opponents, scoffing at GOP claims about job creation and warning that the pipeline might even raise gasoline prices. He also said Canada “could potentially be doing more” to counteract the greenhouse gas emissions being unleashed from Alberta’s oil sands, the major reason for climate activists’...

In a New York Times interview published Saturday, President Obama came out foursquare against the Keystone XL pipeline, claiming that it would not create jobs. “Republicans have said that this would be a big jobs generator,” Obama said. “There is no evidence that that’s true.” He then blamed Canada for not “doing more” to prevent carbon emissions from oil sands. Obama continued, “I meant what I said; I'm going to evaluate this based on whether or not this is going to significantly contribute to carbon in our atmosphere. And there is no doubt that Canada at the source in those...

American greenies imagine they can save the planet by stopping construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, but in the real world they will expose Mother Gaia (and human beings) to greater harm by forcing more oil to be transported by rail. Pipelines are far safer than rail transportation, as we are reminded by the horror that engulfed much of the town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec in flames. Thirteen people are known dead, but as many as 50 are missing, while charred bodies still are being pulled from the ruins. This reality should haunt the nightmares of greenies, people generally given to...

WASHINGTON -- The type of crude oil that would be pumped through the Keystone XL pipeline is no more likely to corrode pipelines or heighten the chance of leaks than other kinds of petroleum, according to a study by the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. The finding rebuts one concern raised by opponents of the controversial 1,700-mile Canada-to-Texas pipeline. They have long argued that pipelines are more prone to corrosion and leaks if they carry diluted bitumen, the tar-like substance extracted in Alberta mostly by strip-mining, mixed with...

The Keystone XL pipeline will not be built unless it can be shown that it will not lead to a net increase in carbon emissions, President Barack Obama declared in a major Tuesday speech on climate change at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. While appearing to appease environmentalists, the announcement could mean that the project will move forward. "Allowing the Keystone pipeline to be built requires a finding that doing so would be in our national interest," he said. "And our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution. The net...

Obama: No to Keystone If it Increases 'Emissions' Daniel Halper June 25, 2013 1:32 PM In President Obama's climate change speech set for later today, he'll reportedly say that the Keystone pipeline shouldn't be built if it hurts the environment. The Huffington Post reports, "President Barack Obama will ask the State Department not to approve the construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline unless it can first determine that it will not lead to a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions, a senior administration official told The Huffington Post." The liberal website adds: The president has avoided weighing in on...

... In short, Mr. Obama is about to hammer the American energy industry, and he's doing it for money. The real elephant in the room is the Keystone XL pipeline project intended to bring Canadian oil to American Gulf Coast refineries and the resulting products onto the international market. In fact, the title of the Bloomberg article cited above includes the words "Keystone foes." Mr. Obama has already delayed Keystone, once and a final decision is coming up. While Keystone has received a lot of press attention, there are two interrelated aspects that have not yet come to the surface....

Friday’s jobs numbers from the Labor Department show that President Obama needs to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Even with 175,000 jobs created in May, there are 2.4 million fewer jobs in America than at the start of the recession in December 2007.Approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, to bring oil from Canada to our refineries near the Gulf of Mexico, would create jobs, both for constructing the pipeline and for refining the oil. But President Obama has delayed the pipeline’s approval, citing safety concerns.Pipelines have been used to transport natural gas and oil, including from Canada to the...

WASHINGTON — Building the $5.3 billion Keystone XL oil pipeline across the middle of the United States will require thousands of workers and millions of pounds of steel. It will also require a lot of smelly dead rats. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service this month said that Keystone's proposed route across Nebraska put the endangered American burying beetle at risk. The agency said the black and orange-spotted insect could be spared, and the project move forward, if proper procedure is followed. That means pipeline builder TransCanada Corp. will have to trap and relocate the one-inch beetles, using frozen rats...

We’re used to hearing that Republicans are the anti-science party, but that criticism is especially hard to take in light of Rep. Raúl Grijalva’s new video, warning of the dangers of building the Keystone XL pipeline. We’ve also been assured that conservatives don’t understand the nuances of metaphor, but there’s just something about Grijalva playing politics while wearing a “borrowed lab coat” and pretending to be a scientist that makes you miss Al Gore’s relatively sophisticated hucksterism. The video’s so bad, in fact, that the National Republican Congressional Committee is urging people to view it, calling it a “must watch.”...

House Republicans pushed through a bill Wednesday to bypass the president to speed approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to Texas. Democrats criticized the legislation as a blatant attempt to allow a foreign company to avoid environmental review. The bill was approved, 241-175, largely along party lines. Republicans said the measure was needed to ensure that the long-delayed pipeline, first proposed in 2008, is built. "This is the most studied pipeline in the history of mankind," said Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., the bill's sponsor. "When is enough enough?" added Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif. "Five years? Six years?...

<p>NEW YORK (AP) -- A controversial oil pipeline to the U.S. Gulf Coast "absolutely needs to go ahead," Canada's prime minister said Thursday, and he warned that the oil will be transported through America one way or another.</p> <p>Stephen Harper addressed the Keystone XL project, a flashpoint in the debate over climate change, during a visit to New York City. The long-delayed project carrying oil from Canada's tar sands would need approval from the State Department, and Harper's remarks - with the U.S. ambassador to Canada, David Jacobson, in the audience - were meant to apply some pressure.</p>

Former Vice President Gore on Tuesday said "there's no such thing as ethical oil," slamming the notion that importing oil from U.S. ally Canada was better than doing so from unfriendly nations. “There’s no such thing as ethical oil. There’s only dirty oil and dirtier oil,” Gore told Canada’s The Globe and Mail during a Tuesday event in Toronto. Gore was responding to Globe and Mail Editor in Chief John Stackhouse on whether it made a difference that oil sands from the proposed Keystone XL pipeline would come from a democratic nation. U.S. backers of the Canada-to-Texas pipeline have pointed...

As the White House moves ever so slowly toward a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, some environmental groups used Monday — Earth Day — to remind the president that approval of the massive project would carry real consequences. “You’ll see … the biggest spread of peaceful civil disobedience in modern American history,” said Becky Bond, political director of the liberal activist group Credo. The organization has been among the loudest opponents of the proposed pipeline, which would carry oil sands from Alberta, Canada, south through the U.S. heartland to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Credo helped organize a San...

It’s Earth Day! The annual global observance when billions of people take time from their busy days to nurture, pamper, and otherwise kiss up to the universally revered world-deity Gaia. Well, not really, but it is a day when preachy environmentalists attempt to guilt-trip people for squatting on the planet they are forced to live on. More than usual that is.

At the latest Casey Research conference, respected investment analyst Porter Stansberry stood at the podium and predicted that the price of oil will fall below US$40 per barrel within the next 12 months. From my perspective, the pressures at play in the oil market are all pushing prices in the opposite direction: up. Global supplies are tightening, costs are rising, and demand is not falling.

If decision-makers take as long to act on this issue as they did on gay rights, we will all be wearing scuba masks to rallies A few weeks ago, Time magazine called the fight over the Keystone XL pipeline that will bring some of the dirtiest energy on the planet from Alberta, Canada, to the US Gulf coast the "Selma and Stonewall" of the climate movement. Which, if you think about it, may be both good news and bad news. Yes, those of us fighting the pipeline have mobilised record numbers of activists: the largest civil disobedience action in 30...

Do you suppose the eco-trendy crowd really, carefully thought this one through before jumping on the self-righteously outraged bandwagon? I have some pretty severe doubts on the matter, but they're in this thing, and they're certainly not going to back down now that they've invested so much time, money, and media coverage to the issue --- even though killing the Keystone XL pipeline will not prevent oil companies from developing Canada's tar sands even a little bit. Stopping their product from moving through pipelines simply means that they’ll have to seek other markets, i.e. shipping it to China via tankers,...

Barack Obama is an addict. And his drug of choice is the money showered on him by Bay Area billionaires.

A California billionaire is pledging to spend as much of his fortune as necessary to make climate change “the defining issue of our generation.” Tom Steyer, who made his riches as a hedge fund manager, told The Hill on Tuesday that he wants to make climate change a campaign issue for years to come and Democratic support for environmental protections as widespread as support for gay marriage and immigration reform. “The goal here is not to win. The goal here is to destroy these people. We want a smashing victory,” Steyer said of candidates he judges to be on the...