Canada lobbied U.S. over TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline | FP Posted | Financial Post
By Stanley Tromp
Canada’s ambassador to the United States wrote to the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last fall, asking it to disregard greenhouse gas emissions from Alberta oil extraction as it decides whether to support a proposed massive Canadian pipeline to Texas.
As well, one Alberta bureaucrat warned the EPA its greenhouse gas policies could place at risk “the longstanding energy trading relationship between our two jurisdictions.”
The letters, including one from Canadian ambassador Gary Doer to the EPA’s most senior official and copied to Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State, reveal an officially polite but tough disagreement over jurisdictional authority and greenhouse gas emissions.
PDF: Click here to read the letters.
The discord revolves around TransCanada Corp.’s proposed $8-billion, 2,673-kilometre, metre-thick Keystone XL pipeline. The pipeline would ship 500,000 barrels each day of raw bitumen from Alberta to refineries along the Gulf Coast in Texas by 2013, and has the potential to double the U.S. consumption of Canadian crude oil.
The project is staunchly opposed by environmentalists and many U.S. politicians. Calgary-based TransCanada still awaits a presidential permit from the U.S. State Department, which has to approve the pipeline because it crosses an international border. In deliberating, the State Department sought advice about the proposal from the EPA and seven other agencies.
On July 21, 2010, Cynthia Giles, the EPA’s assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance, gave the State Department’s draft environmental impact statement (EIS) for Keystone XL its lowest possible rating.
Read more: http://business.financialpost.com/2011/01/23/canada-lobbies-u-s-over-transcanadas-keystone-pipeline/#ixzz1C0eaRDYC
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