July 29, 2010

Alberta premier confident Keystone XL pipeline will go ahead

EDMONTON

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach says a controversial Alberta-to-Texas oil pipeline will be built, despite a likely delay of six weeks in construction of the nearly US$7-billion project.

“I’m confident the pipeline will go ahead, but it has to go through the regulatory approvals and hearings, that is statutory, and we have to respect the process,”Stelmach said.

Terry Cunha, spokesman for TransCanada Corp., said the nearly 2,700-kilometre Keystone XL pipeline may be delayed by up to six weeks because the U.S. State Department is extending its environmental review of the project.

The company is “completely comfortable with that,”Cunha said, adding they believe they can make up for lost time during construction.

Stelmach said Alberta’s oilsands will continue to deliver oil to meet the needs of the United States.

“We’re supplying 1.2, 1.3 million barrels a day, production is increasing but so is the demand. As their economy recovers, there will be more demand for oil, both bitumen and processed,”he said.

Documents released last week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency harshly criticized the State Department’s draft environmental impact statement for Keystone XL, saying it doesn’t consider how importing more oilsands oil would affect U.S. climate change policies.

The State Department is in the midst of putting together its final environmental impact assessment, which will take comments from the general public into account.

The agencies originally had until mid-September to submit their comments, but they requested more time to see the final outcome of the environmental review. Now they’ll have 90 days until after the department issues its environmental impact assessment.

Earlier in July, Representative Henry Waxman, who chairs the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, wrote a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton making several of the same points as the EPA.

Last month, a group of 50 other House members signed a letter to Clinton with similar concerns.

Keystone XL is an extension to an existing TransCanada pipeline that stretches from Alberta to the U.S. Midwest and Cushing, Okla.

The expansion would increase capacity from its current 590,000 barrels per day to 1.1 million barrels per day. Keystone XL would cut through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, with another leg stretching from Oklahoma to refineries along the Texas coast.

Environmental groups say Keystone XL will increase U.S. reliance on “dirty”oilsands crude, which they say emits much more carbon dioxide than conventional types of crude, endangers wildlife and destroys forests.

TransCanada says the project will create much-needed jobs south of the border, inject billions into U.S. government coffers and reduce U.S. dependence on oil from abroad.

Canadian Press

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