America Just the Middleman between Dirtiest Canadian Oil and Thirstiest Foreign Markets
 
WASHINGTON (January 18, 2012) – The Obama administration is expected to announce today that they have rejected the proposed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The pipeline had come under increasing fire due to the high pollution content of the Canadian tar sands fuel, the route of the pipeline across sensitive lands, the increase in gas prices in the Midwest United States that the pipeline would produce, and the expected export of the majority of the oil to foreign markets in South America, Europe and elsewhere.
 
Under questioning by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) at an Energy and Commerce hearing on December 2, 2011, the CEO of Transcanada, the company proposing the pipeline, said he could not guarantee that the fuel from the pipeline would stay in the United States. Rep. Markey also led a group of 36 House Democrats who wrote the State Department in October of last year saying that the expected re-exportation of the Canadian oil would not enhance U.S. energy security.
 
Rep. Markey, who is the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee and a senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, issued the following statement:
 
“The Keystone pipeline was never and will never be a key part of U.S. energy policy, and has instead become a distraction from real attempts to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
 
“This pipeline would have taken the dirtiest oil on the planet, sent it snaking across the Midwest in an already-leaky pipeline, only to be exported to foreign markets once it reached the Gulf Coast.
 
“The United States shouldn’t be used as a middleman between the dirtiest Canadian oil and the thirstiest foreign markets, when what the American people get in return is environmental risk and higher gas prices.
 
“This pipeline was a bad idea from the start, and this is the correct decision in the end.”
 
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