Environmentalists are promising “the biggest fight yet” over a stretch of pipeline since Obama scrapped the Keystone XL project last year to deliver tar sands oil from Canada to the U.S.
The latest fight concerns Canadian oil company Enbridge and its plan to increase the capacity of its Alberta Clipper pipeline that dips into the American upper Midwest and crosses through the Great Lakes region.
The new fight, which could land in court, is also taking prominence in Tuesday’s primary elections. Democratic presidential condidate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is playing up opposition to the Alberta Clipper in the runup on Monday.
“President Obama said when his administration was reviewing the Keystone [XL] pipeline that he wouldn’t approve it if it made climate and our planet more dangerous,” Sanders said while campaigning in Minnesota. “Those are exactly the same standards that we need to apply to the Alberta Clipper … and that’s what I would do as president of the United States of America.”
Natural Resources Defense Council President Rhea Suh said in a Monday email to supporters that Enbridge is devising “an illegal scheme to double the capacity of its Alberta Clipper tar sands pipeline, making it every bit as big, dirty and dangerous as the Keystone XL.”
She said the environmental group “is escalating an all-out, no-holds-barred campaign to sink the Alberta Clipper — just like we did with the Keystone XL— by building an unstoppable nationwide movement of protest.”
Suh says the State Department, which is charged with approving pipelines that cross U.S. borders, is taking steps to approve the project, despite President Obama’s pledges to reduce fossil fuel consumption.
“Astonishingly, the U.S. State Department is prepared to green-light this plan without a public review — giving Big Oil a big break while putting thousands of Americans at risk of another tar sands oil catastrophe,” Suh said.
The agency said Enbridge applied to expand the Alberta Clipper line in 2012 and in 2014 said it would prepare a supplemental environmental impact statement for the proposed expansion, noting that the action “will not approve or deny the presidential permit application for the proposed project.”
“Instead, the [environmental statement] will assess the potential environmental impacts that could result if the presidential permit application were approved or denied and associated cumulative effects” and will take into account relevant laws and executive orders, the agency said.
The environmental group’s campaign against the project will include:
- A grassroots “pressure” campaign targeting Secretary of State John Kerry, “demanding that the State Department thoroughly review the climate-wrecking Alberta Clipper and then reject it.”
- It will seek to “amplify” local voices in the states affected by the pipeline.
- Arm the media “with the damning facts [to] … expose the truth about the fossil fuel monstrosity.”
- And last but not least, “take this fight to court if that’s what it takes to slam the door on the pipeline and move America toward a clean energy future.”
