Obama Rejects Keystone XL Pipeline

After years of heavy pressure from oil interests and the conservative former Canadian government of Stephen Harper, President Obama announced today that he's rejecting further construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, a major victory for clean energy and environmental advocates.  The nearly 1,200 mile pipeline would have linked Canadian tar sands fields in Alberta with refineries along the Gulf Coast, and would have had a capacity of some 800,000 per day of the carbon-dirty tar sands.

The construction of the pipeline was one of those rare instances which united normal foes in industry and labor, who mistakenly saw it as a large jobs creator (estimates vary, but were always inflated dramatically by pipeline proponents). Many also mistakenly believed that the tar sands oil would directly benefit U.S. consumers, but the refined product was destined for delivery to the world spot market.  In addition, with oil demand down, and prices falling for crude oil, the rationale for the pipeline was increasingly undercut on economic grounds.

The announcement comes roughly a month before the United Nations conference on climate change in Paris, where President Obama hopes to convince other industrialized nations to take more meaningful action on climate change and curbing carbon emissions from burning fossil fuel.