The Senate has scheduled a vote on the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline. Apparently, this is being driven largely by Sen. Landrieu (D-Louisiana), who is hoping like hell that this will help her win her runoff election. According to a report I heard the other day, the pipeline’s supporters are confident they have the 60 votes needed to break any filibuster, so I’d expect the vote will probably pass. And it’s already passed the House.
Assuming that approval for the pipeline passes Congress, do you think Obama would veto it? If the bill passes, it will have done so with bipartisan support. If he vetos a bill that passed the still-Democratically-controlled Senate, wouldn’t that pretty much ensure that he’ll be the lamest of lame ducks? It’s not like the next session of Congress is going to be any friendlier.
I hope Keystone is approved. There are already underground pipes moving oil throughout the US and Canada. Keystone is nothing new and for Obama to kill it would be extremely foolish.
Obama has vetoeda whole 2 billsin the last 6 years. That’s fewer than any president since Garfield, who you may remember was assassinated his first year in office. I don’t think it will be much of a deal to his legacy or working with congress to veto one bill on a pipeline that isn’t that good for our economy or our environment anyway.
The Great Ogallala is running out anyway, but that decline may be managed by future technology before North Texas becomes a dusty hellhole: such a recovery could be hindered by a million gallons of straight crude settling.
I’m not at all thrilled that they want to build this pipeline over the Ogallala Aquifer, but I’m afraid Obama is going to have to make some concessions. Especially when he signs that executive order on immigration.
An executive order followed by a veto of the pipeline would not look good for the president.
Though it’s a hot-button issue, the KXL pipeline is not that big a deal. In federal terms, it won’t cost much. It was never intended to help the US oil supply; it’s all for export. It’s not a big jobs bonanza, even in the first 2 years of construction. After it’s built, fewer than a hundred workers can run the whole thing.
The handful of companies who will make a trainload of money on it have done a terrific job of selling it to the public, and it will very likely happen.
Didn’t one of the companies involved just get exempted from responsibility for cleanup costs? Just caught a fragment of this on the news, I could have misunderstood.
That pace will pick up now with a Republican Congress. At least, I certainly hope he has his veto pen handy. If the Republicans think their bills are so vital, they can over-ride his veto. If they can.
Why should he make any concessions at this point? He’s been offering concessions for six years and having them throw back in his face. The Republicans have made a policy of agreeing to nothing and they just won control of Congress. Maybe Obama will decide to start making life difficult for the Republicans.
*"LIABILITY FOR OIL SPILLS: By a vote of 192 for and 224 against, the House on Friday refused to require the Keystone XL Pipeline to pay into the Treasury Department’s Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. Sponsored by Democrats, this motion to HR 5682 (above) sought to blunt an Internal Revenue Service ruling under which crude extracted from tar sands is exempted from mandatory support of the oil-spill fund. The ruling spares TransCanada Corp., the Keystone owner, from having to pay 8 cents per barrel into the fund to help cover the cost of cleaning up any spills. Congress established the fund in response to the 1989 Exxon Valdez grounding, which spilled hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude into Alaska’s Prince William Sound. A yes vote was to require the Keystone XL Pipeline to contribute to the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.
A lot of the costs are already sunk, so even if they can’t make a profit, they can still minimize their losses by producing a certain amount. And I don’t have numbers on hand, but I remember reading that most (90% ?) production sources are still profitable at $80 a barrel.
It’s pointless to try to predict where oil prices will be years from now when the pipeline is finished, but there’s no reason to think the long-term trend is going anywhere but up. Despite what environmentalists would like, there is no possability of leaving the oil in the ground. Not gonna happen. If they don’t send the oil down here, they’re going to pipe it to British Colombia and then ship it straight to China. Might as well allow the US to derive some economic benefit from it.
Plus, even if oil prices are relatively low now, that just means the oil execs will have to wipe their asses with $50 bills instead of Benjamins
Considering that Obama claims to represent the two thirds of the public who didn’t come out to support his policies, it would be interesting to hear how he justified a veto of a project that has almost two-thirds public support.
I hope he does veto it. A brisk override in the next Congress will teach him a valuable lesson on why those who don’t vote don’t count.
