Just Build the Damn Pipeline Already

Former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar: Build Keystone XL

Former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who served under President Obama, said Wednesday that the Keystone XL pipeline should be built.

Salazar, speaking at the North American Prospect Expo, said the pipeline would be beneficial for the country, since the U.S. would be using that oil regardless of whether it's built.

“At the end of the day, we are going to be consuming that oil,” Salazar said. “So is it better for us to get the oil from our good neighbor from the north, or to be bringing it from some place in the Middle East?”

Salazar also praised hydraulic fracking in his remarks, pointing out that there has not been “a single case where hydraulic fracking has created an environmental problem for anyone.

 Canadian Ambassador: Rejection of Keystone Would 'Definitely Strain' U.S.-Canadian Relations

Canada's ambassador to the U.S. isn't sugarcoating the diplomatic weight of the looming White House decision on the Keystone XL pipeline.

Gary Doer told the news service Platts that he's optimistic about winning approval, while warning that rejection would be "perceived as being political" and "definitely strain" U.S.-Canadian relations. He argued that the project has met the various U.S. benchmarks, citing the State Department's environmental analysis released Jan. 31.

"The report basically says that [oil from Alberta's oil sands] either will come down on rail with higher GHGs, and it is now coming down on rail, or it can come down on a pipeline with less GHGs," he told Platts Energy Week TV, using the acronym for greenhouse gases.

"So I guess I would say, based on this report and based on the president's own stated [climate] criteria, that if the project is rejected it would be perceived as being political and not on the basis of the public interest of the United states and Canada," Doer added in the interview that aired Sunday.

Delaying, or worse, permanently blocking the pipeline just doesn't make sense any more except as a means for democrats to continue to suck up to the watermelon environmentalists (green on the outside, red in the center) as long as possible.