Photo by Dan Gunderson, BW Communications, LLC.
TransCanada is encouraged by the strong bipartisan support for Keystone XL by U.S. lawmakers. There have been multiple votes in the U.S. Senate has passed to support the construction of Keystone XL; 10 votes in support of this important infrastructure project have also occurred in the U.S. House of Representatives. This latest vote mirrors the strong will of the American public, who have consistently supported Keystone XL in a series of 30 public opinion polls over the past three years.
As five studies and 17,000 pages of scientific review have led the U.S. State Department to conclude, Keystone XL can be built and operated with minimal environmental impact. This is something we should all want, and it’s been repeatedly confirmed by the U.S. State Department’s own Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement.
Like the existing Keystone pipeline that has safely transported more than 700 million barrels of the same oil to U.S. refineries since 2010, the Canadian and American oil transported along Keystone XL will stay in the U.S. and be refined and used to create products we need like gasoline, diesel, pharmaceuticals, medical devices like heart valves, other plastics and countless other items. Every barrel of Canadian and American oil transported by Keystone XL replaces imports from overseas – and improves U.S. and North American energy independence.
Those who argue this pipeline is for export are not being factual. Why on earth would Canadian and U.S. companies pay to ship their oil to Gulf Coast refineries, then pay again to ship that same oil overseas, only to pass tankers bringing millions of barrels of oil into America? It makes no sense. That was the exact conclusion of the U.S. State Department in its Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement issued in January of 2014 which states: ‘such an option (exports) appears unlikely to be economically justified for any significant durable trade given transport costs and market conditions’.
We hope that people will move beyond the discounting of the nearly 9,000 men and women who will build this infrastructure project (and more than 42,000 in total). These jobs are real and meaningful. Just ask the 14,000 construction workers who helped build the existing Keystone system – those jobs were real and the impacts for their families and the communities where they lived and worked were real too.
Keystone XL is a project that was needed when the price of a barrel of oil was less than $40 in 2008 when we first made our application, at more than $100 last year and around $45 today. We have continued to show why Keystone XL is an important infrastructure project that benefits American workers, communities, governments and businesses – all without any government investment. It’s time to approve Keystone XL so we can transport Canadian and American oil to fuel the everyday lives of the American people. We look forward to a decision by the U.S. Administration to approve the construction of Keystone XL.
Russ Girling
President and Chief Executive Officer, TransCanada