In Huge Win for Environmentalists, Obama Rejects the Keystone XL Pipeline

People have marched and chanted, zip tied themselves to the White House fence, gotten arrested and carried a huge inflatable pipeline through the streets of D.C. They’ve sued, held vigils, and rode door-to-door on horseback, all in opposition to a massive tar sands pipeline.

Now, the six-year fight over that pipeline is finally coming to an end.

President Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline Friday morning after a meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry.  Obama said Friday that the State Department, in its final Environmental Impact Statement, found that the pipeline would not be in the country’s national interest.  “I agree with that decision,” he said.

Obama discussed three State Department findings on the pipeline Friday.  The pipeline, Obama said, would not “make a meaningful long-term contribution to our economy.”

“If Congress is serious about wanting to create jobs, this was not the way to do it,” Obama said.  Instead, Congress should pass a “bipartisan infrastructure” that would create more jobs than Keystone XL would, the president said.  If approved, the pipeline was projected to create only around 35 permanent jobs.

The pipeline also wouldn’t lower gas prices, the president said.  And “shipping dirtier crude oil into our county would not increase America’s energy security,” he said.

“What has increased America’s energy security is our strategy over the past several years to reduce our reliance on dirty fossil fuels from unstable parts of the world,” he said.

The country must transition to a clean energy economy — something it’s already succeeding at doing, Obama continued.  America also needs to continue to be a leader in climate action — and approving the pipeline would have “undermined” that leadership.

“The time to act is now.  Not later, not someday, right here, right now,” Obama said.

In a statement, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the State Department also found the following when it reviewed the pipeline proposal:  its construction “raises a range of concerns about the impact on local communities, water supplies, and cultural heritage sites,” and it would “facilitate transportation into our country of a particularly dirty source of fuel.”

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