The Keystone oil pipeline may have won approval from Nebraska’s governor Tuesday, but the final decision rests with President Obama.
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And after the heavy emphasis on climate change in his inaugural speech Monday, analysts say approval is now less certain than ever.
“By elevating climate change, he risks backlash and calls of hypocrisy if he promptly approves the pipeline,” said Divya Reddy, an energy and natural resource analyst at the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy.
Reddy, like most analysts, still expects the pipeline to be approved, though the chance that it won’t is growing.
“We expect the inaugural address will invigorate pipeline opponents,” Whitney Stanco, an energy analyst at the Guggenheim Securities’ Washington Research Group, wrote in a research note Tuesday.
The expansion of the Keystone pipeline has touched off an intense debate in the United States. Supporters like it because it will carry 830,000 barrels a day of oil from Alberta, Canada, to the U.S. Gulf Coast — potentially reducing imports from other, more volatile areas. Its construction is also estimated to create some 5,000 jobs, according to the State Department. The company building the pipeline, TransCanada, estimates even higher job growth.
