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Regulators Approve New Route for the Keystone XL Pipeline
USAgNet - 11/21/2017

The Nebraska Public Service Commission has authorized the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, but the decision now leaves serious questions about whether the $8-billion pipeline will ever be built.

The commission's decision was the latest twist in a story of a mega energy project that nine years ago breathed the pure economic oxygen of Alberta's oil sands boom. The Keystone XL project, designed to transport 830,000 barrels of oil 1,179 miles from northern Canada to Steele City, Neb., is now gasping the thin air of low oil prices, slowing production, rising expenses, sinking demand and intense civic opposition.

Nearly from the moment that TransCanada introduced the pipeline in 2008, the Keystone XL has attracted outsize attention. Residents of Texas, where the pipeline was originally proposed to terminate, complained their land was being taken against their will. Nebraska residents resented what they said was unwelcome bullying by a foreign company. They feared oil spilled from Keystone XL would ruin their prime source of drinking water.

National environmental groups opposed the project on the grounds it would prod more tar sands development, the dirtiest source of oil, according to several authoritative studies, and pour millions more tons of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

On Monday, in a packed hearing room in Lincoln, both sides awaited the Nebraska Public Service Commission's crucial ruling, the last regulatory hurdle for the proposed project. During a proceeding that lasted less than 10 minutes, the commission's three men overruled its two women and approved building the Keystone XL, but on a route much different than the one TransCanada preferred.

The so-called Mainline Alternative Route draws the XL closer to the alignment of the Keystone pipeline, its 7-year-old sister, which transports more than 500,000 barrels of Alberta tar sands oil daily to refinery hubs in Oklahoma and Illinois.

In its application to the commission, TransCanada specifically objected to the alternative route because it would be longer, require more pumping capacity and cost more. The new route also would require more environmental review because it would disturb more land and erodible soils, cross more habitat for threatened and endangered species, and cross more streams.

The commission's ruling initially perplexed observers. But soon after the hearing adjourned the full measure of its import became clear. If TransCanada wants to proceed, it faces years of additional state regulatory review and court proceedings.


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