Reports are popping up all over that the Obama administration this afternoon will reject the Keystone pipeline proposal. Congressional Republicans forced a short time-span for consideration that the administration said wasn’t adequate to consider important environmental issues in the route.
I’m surprised the thunder of Republican press releases hasn’t begun yet. They will continue their gross exaggeration of job impact and local Republicans will focus on the 60 part-time workers at a Little Rock pipe plant who’ll be affected. Shouldn’t be long.
Note that the pipeline company can reapply. A new route should bypass a sensitive portion of Nebraska, a routing stoutly opposed by Nebraska Republicans. It won’t address concerns about the material being shipped.
The National Wildlife Federation has some fact-based analysis you aren’t likely to see in a Griffin-Womack-Crawford-Boozman news release.
Sen. Mark Pryor beat local Republicans to the punch with a release objecting to the president’s decision:
I strongly disagree with President Obama’s decision to postpone the Keystone pipeline project. This project will sustain and create jobs in the United States. I also believe that in this day and age it can be done in a way that protects the environment
U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin later lamented sending oil to China (though there’s no guarantee goods refined in the U.S. will stay here) and impact on Little Rock jobs (though Keyston isn’t the only pipeline on which Welspun is a supplier).
The pipeline company, by the way, has said it WILL reapply and that it WILL work to fix the route through Nebraska, as Republicans there had insisted. Republicans here preferred to trash the Nebraska water supply to avoid — maybe — temporary layoffs of 60 part-time Arkansas workers.
The Center for American Progress praised Obama’s decision: