Nebraska’s state energy regulators are set to make a key decision Monday on whether to allow TransCanada’s Keystone XL oil pipeline to move forward.
Climate change activists are vowing to continue fighting the project if the state’s Public Service Commission decides to approve it.
The Keystone XL pipeline has become a political punching bag between the Right and the Left for nearly a decade, and it looks like that will continue, despite President Trump’s executive action soon after he was inaugurated to expedite the project.
“Even if Nebraska’s PSC approves the permit, the fight’s not over yet,” said Jason Disterhoft, senior climate campaigner at the Rainforest Action Network.
He said if Nebraska gives the pipeline the thumbs up, they will take the fight to the financial institutions that back TransCanada. The group plans to use a Dec. 15 deadline for the company to renew its loan obligations with major investment banks, putting pressure on the banks to end their business with the large Canadian energy company.
“For Keystone to get built, it needs two things: permits and money,” Disterhoft said. “There is no indication that TransCanada will look for a project loan for Keystone, so any bank that’s backing TransCanada is backing Keystone.”
He wants banks to drop the company “unless they want to get caught up in the controversy” surrounding the pipeline.
The rising level of concern coming from climate and environmental groups in the last several days may indicate that there is a fair chance the state commission approves the pipeline.
Those concerns rose higher Friday after reports said the state commissioners are not planning to consider the 5,000-barrel oil spill that occurred last week at the Keystone pipeline in South Dakota, also owned by TransCanada.
“That the Nebraska commissioners won’t consider safety in their decision on Keystone XL should alarm everyone,” said the anti-fossil fuel group 350.org. “If the [Public Service Commission] truly has Nebraska’s interests at heart, they’ll reject Keystone XL.”
Pipelines spill, the group said. “They spill, and if Keystone XL is built, we can only expect more of the world’s dirtiest oil spewing across farms, treaty lands, and throughout the Great Plains.”
Keystone XL would link Canada’s tar sands oil producers in Alberta to refiners on the U.S. Gulf Coast. But it has hit more than a few snags over the years, Nebraska being one of them.
Nebraska delayed the project after saying several years ago that it required further study before signing off on the project. Before that, former Republican Gov. Dave Heineman had persuaded the state legislature to enact legislation that would give him the final say in approving the pipeline. That landed the Keystone XL project in district county court, where the state law was deemed unconstitutional, blocking the pipeline’s approval.
Later, the Nebraska Supreme Court overruled the decision removing another roadblock for the pipeline but leaving the Public Service Commission in the driver’s seat on approving a new route for the line to avoid water contamination concerns.
But former President Barack Obama was probably the pipeline’s biggest roadblock. He rejected TransCanada’s pipeline permit to cross the border with Canada and continue the nearly 1,200-mile long pipeline, citing the Paris climate change agreement as the reason. The permit was reviewed by the State Department for seven years before Obama rejected it in November 2015.
Trump made the pipeline project a top priority after arriving in the Oval Office. Just days after being sworn in, he issued a Jan. 24 executive order to expedite the TransCanada permit approval process. A federal permit for the project was issued in March.
