Pipeline nixed

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Michael

I meant to post this yesterday, but it slipped my mind. Anyway, the pipeline has been delayed for now:

The Obama administration rejected the Canada-to-Texas pipeline because there was not enough time to complete a review of TransCanada’s $7 billion project, which included finding a new route around the sensitive region in Nebraska.

TransCanada said it would reapply for a permit and would continue to work with the state.

What we have is two sets of politics. One is stupid and the other makes sense/was forced. First off, the Republicans pushed for this issue to go ahead without proper reviews, without full input from the affected states, and they did so because their constituency likes to pollute stuff. The Obama Administration, on the other hand, denied this in part to appease environmentalists ahead of the election, but also because there wasn’t really much of a choice here.

So now TransCanada has reapplied for its permit. It will probably get approved in 2013 or shortly thereafter, but this could have all occurred even earlier if the Republicans didn’t shoot themselves in the foot. If they really cared about getting this thing built, they would have given time to let it be studied as to how to best go through Nebraska and other states. As it stands, they were just looking to make the President look bad; they were not concerned with getting anything done.

The Republicans only have themselves to blame for this one.

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