TransCanada Caves, Embraces “Opportunity” to Protect Sand Hills

After insisting for three years that running the Keystone XL pipeline straight through the ecologically sensitive Nebraska Sand Hills was the best option for pumping 900,000 barrels of tar sands oil a day from Alberta to Texas, TransCanada now says that rerouting Keystone XL, as many environmental advocates have demanded all along, is a good idea:

TransCanada President Alex Pourbaix, at a press conference in Lincoln, said that last week's decision by the State Department was spawned exclusively by concerns over the route passing through the Sand Hills, and provided "an opportunity" to pursue alternative routes.

Finding a new route around that area of shallow groundwater "removes by far the greatest obstacle to (federal) approval," Pourbaix said, and should help calm oil refineries, which were expecting to get oil from the Keystone XL by 2014 [Paul Hammel and Martha Stoddard, "Flood: TransCanada to Move Pipeline," Omaha World-Herald, 2011.11.14].

(See also TransCanada's press release on its reroute decision.)

Opportunity—ha! That's kind of like saying getting fired is an opportunity to pursue needlepoint.

Bold Nebraska's Jane Kleeb calls TransCanada's surrender a rare victory for regular citizens against Big Oil, although she warns we can't trust TransCanada until we get the reroute promise in writing.

A reroute decision isn't all good news. Moving the route means subjecting a new line of landowners to possible eminent domain. TransCanada may also be acquiescing this quickly in order to justify arguing for expediting the review process and getting Keystone XL back on schedule. Pourbaix says the reroute deal with Nebraska is meant to give "confidence to our shippers that we can get a pipeline through Nebraska built and built in a timely fashion." (Dennis, are you sure we can wait on those new pipeline safeguards?)

Stay tuned for the new map from TransCanada... and stay tuned for what we hope will be a thorough and public review of the environmental impacts of the rerouted Keystone XL pipeline.

p.s.: Alas, TransCanada has pushed Nebraska to foot the bill for studying alternative routes.

pp.s.: I hear Matt McGovern will be on South Dakota Public Radio's Dakota Midday today to discuss Keystone XL. Matt should have some good perspective on this fast-changing policy situation. Maybe he'll even field a caller question about whether he plans to jump into the U.S. House race!