Elizabeth McGowan's articles

WASHINGTON—Congressional Republicans are floating a handful of measures to override President Obama's January rejection of a permit for the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline. But it's questionable whether any of these efforts, including a bill that could be debated in the House this week, would actually speed up approval of the Canada-to-Texas pipeline.

Legal experts agree that the Constitution allows Congress to bypass the president and legislate a permitting process for cross-border pipelines such as TransCanada's $7 billion project. But they also agree that it's a tricky endeavor likely to trigger a complex and drawn-out lawsuit.

For starters, a pro-pipeline measure focused solely on Keystone XL has only a tiny chance of passing muster in a Democrat-majority Senate. Plus, President Obama wouldn't sign such a bill into law.

If the GOP did somehow overcome those barriers, the law would almost certainly be challenged in federal court—probably by environmental organizations and/or landowners along the pipeline route. However, the nature of the lawsuit would depend upon the content of the law that passes.

WASHINGTON—A barrage of industry-led advertising and lobbying urging President Obama to "put jobs ahead of politics" has fueled the impression that labor unions universally champion the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

But that myth was blown apart just minutes after the president rejected the $7 billion project on Jan. 18.

That's when five labor unions that had kept low profiles on the pipeline—including the 2 million-member strong Service Employees International Union—issued a joint statement backing Obama's decision. Not only did they laud him for acting "wisely," but they also emphasized the need to address climate change and find sustainable and secure energy sources.

Since then, a more nuanced snapshot has emerged of where labor unions stand on Keystone XL. That newer picture weakens industry's argument that the pipeline has broad union support. The handful of unions that praised the president and questioned the project’s merits represent close to 5 million members. Membership in the five unions publicly promoting the project is near 3.3 million. (See chart.)

WASHINGTON—President Obama talked for one hour, four minutes and 15 seconds Tuesday night when he delivered his third State of the Union address. He devoted seven of those minutes to how Congress and his administration could and should press forward on energy and environmental issues.

Obama highlighted three issues as ready for immediate action: slashing oil subsidies, crafting a clean energy standard and requiring companies that drill on federal land to disclose the chemicals they pump underground.

Here, InsideClimate News summarizes where each of these topics stands today with Congress or the appropriate regulatory agency.

WASHINGTON—Now that President Obama has at least temporarily quashed the Keystone XL pipeline, TransCanada executives have to be wondering if they really need enemies when their supposed friends, the House Republicans, have placed them in such a financial and strategic bind.

Obama's Wednesday ruling not only means the Calgary-based company will have to reapply for a permit to construct the $7 billion hotly contested Keystone XL. But it has also sent rumblings of doubt through the entire oil industry and into boardrooms of other Canadian energy companies that are worried about progress on their own separate oil sands pipelines.

TransCanada opted not to discuss the Republicans' decision to force the president into giving its project a quick "yes" or "no."

"We are not going to comment on the politics of the Keystone XL application," TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard said in an e-mail to InsideClimate News. "That is better left to others."

Fewer than 24 hours after Obama's announcement, TransCanada's chief executive officer Russ Girling assured investors that the permit denial—which he hopes will be reversed next year—should not cause the $60 billion company to fall behind its energy infrastructure competitors.

"Keystone is an important part of our business, but we're a large business," he said Thursday at a conference in Whistler, British Columbia, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. "We've got a lot of things going on right now. Thankfully, all of those other projects are not attracting the same level of attention as Keystone is right now. We’d never get anything done if that were the case."

Shortly after Obama's Wednesday announcement, the value of TransCanada stock shares dropped by as much as 4.8 percent, then rebounded after company officials said they would reapply for a permit. It climbed again Monday, trading at $41.83 per share in New York.

While TransCanada is trying to appear calm, its competitors admit to being flustered.

(Editor's update: On Thursday evening, House Republicans capitulated to mounting pressure from the GOP and President Obama by agreeing to an up-down vote on a measure very similar to the bill the Senate passed last weekend. Briefly, it will allow for a seamless extension of the payroll tax holiday for two months—through February—and still require Obama to give a thumbs up or thumbs down to the controversial Keystone XL pipeline within 60 days.)

WASHINGTON—House Republicans keep trying to give President Obama a political black eye by wielding the 36-inch diameter Keystone XL pipeline as a cudgel just before Christmas.

Instead, they could end up severely maiming only themselves if they persist with end-of-year legislative theatrics at what some are referring to as the "Capitol Hill Playhouse" this week.

"It's quite a sandbox, isn't it?" Pat Parenteau, a Vermont Law School professor who specializes in Congress and environmental issues, told InsideClimate News. "I think their strategy has backfired and that they've roped themselves with this political gambit. This idea that you have to keep introducing ideology into every issue, that will be their undoing."

Parenteau is referring to House Republicans' insistence on gumming up a straightforward bill to extend a payroll tax break for 160 million Americans with language that would force Obama to fast-track approval or denial of the $7 billion, hotly contested pipeline.

WASHINGTON—Nebraskans suspected that somebody on Capitol Hill would try to force the Obama administration to drastically speed up decision-making on the now-delayed Keystone XL pipeline.

They just never figured it would be one of their own.

The chutzpah of Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry in trying to fast track the pipeline has outraged Cornhuskers who labored for years to reroute the fiercely debated $7 billion project out of the environmentally sensitive Sandhills. Some are predicting that the seven-term Republican could be punching himself a one-way ticket out of Washington with this attempted legislative end-run.

"We feel like we're being totally undermined," rancher and farmer Randy Thompson told InsideClimate News. "I don't see how this wouldn't make him vulnerable in the next election. He might be in for a rude awakening in 2012."

House leadership appears intent on rolling Terry's measure into this week's vote on a mega-bill that features the extension of a payroll tax break as its centerpiece. Action could come as early as Tuesday as Congress scurries to wrap up loose ends before a Christmas break.

Terry's North American Energy Access Act sidesteps the State Department, which has authority over the project because the pipeline crosses an international border. Instead, it requires Calgary-based TransCanada to apply for a Keystone XL permit via the independent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission—and give FERC just 30 days to act on the application. That would force the Obama administration to approve or reject the pipeline before the November 2012 presidential election.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said such legislation would be dead on arrival in his chamber. Meanwhile, a carefully treading-President Obama—hesitating to utter the word veto—has vowed to reject the bill if it crosses his desk.

Still, just the thought that Terry, 49, could be so completely tone deaf in his home state fires up Jane Kleeb. The executive director of Bold Nebraska was instrumental in uniting a diverse coalition of farmers, ranchers and environmental organizations.

WASHINGTON—Just six months ago, few could have imagined that an inanimate object as ugly as a 36-inch diameter, 1,702-mile oil sands pipeline could revive a dormant and depressed climate movement.

But then handfuls of activists experienced a series of "aha" moments that resuscitated their cause. First, they connected the dots between the BP oil spill, a do-nothing Congress and the "carbon bomb" that would likely be released if Alberta's tar sands continue to be mined. They also began pressing President Obama on his promise to wean the country of its oil addiction.

Gradually, something began to click. During the summer, more than 1,250 anti-pipeline protesters were arrested during a two-week sit-in at the White House. Hundreds more dogged Obama wherever he traveled across the country. And last Sunday, 10,000-plus flocked to the nation's capital to encircle the eight city blocks around the president's home.

On Thursday afternoon, the newly energized climate activists discovered that the formula they had created had been wildly successful. That's when State Department officials announced that they will delay TransCanada's proposed $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline project while they search for a route that keeps it out of Nebraska's fragile Sandhills landscape and irreplaceable Ogallala Aquifer. That decision will significantly slow—and maybe even halt—a project that would have pumped 900,000 barrels a day of a type of heavy crude called diluted bitumen from Alberta to refineries along the Gulf Coast. State Department officials estimate an environmental analysis of a reroute through the Cornhusker State won't be complete until 2013.

WASHINGTON—As Brian Nowak made a beeline across Lafayette Square to the handmade "Minnesotans for Climate Action" banner, he was intercepted by a grinning 20-something.

"I'm so happy to see you here," the young man told the white-haired and bearded Nowak. "I was afraid it was only going to be people my age."

"Ditto," thought the 59-year-old architect from a Twin Cities suburb.

As the two mingled early Sunday afternoon in the park next to the White House, both were further relieved to discover that their fellow Keystone XL pipeline protesters were far from a homogenous lot. Skin tones varied from the palest of whites to the darkest of browns. The thousands who spilled into the nation's capital via train, bus, bicycle, car and airplane included babies in backpack carriers, kids tumbling in leaf piles, sign-toting grandmothers, men in suits and ties, college students with a knack for inventive chants—and a handful of leashed dogs elated to be cavorting on a brilliant and sunny autumn day.

The crowd's goal was to give President Obama what activists dubbed a "solidarity hug" by forming a human chain to encircle the White House grounds. At first, Nowak fretted that the monumental effort would flop if the hordes that had signed up didn't follow through on their convictions. But his worries vanished a few hours later, when what he had feared might be a mere trickle overflowed into a rumbling river of an estimated 10,000 people standing at least two to three deep, encircling what amounts to about eight city blocks. Most had donned organizer-issued orange vests, so an aerial view would have resembled a bizarrely colored moat around the most famous address in America.

WASHINGTON—TransCanada's offer to fund a $100 million performance bond if it fails to clean up a future oil spill in Nebraska's sensitive Sandhills might sound like a hefty sum.

But is it enough to persuade state legislators not to reroute the hotly contested Keystone XL pipeline out of that fragile landscape when they convene in a special session Tuesday?

Critics maintain that the bond—the centerpiece in a package of six Nebraska-specific safety measures that TransCanada executive Alex Pourbaix rolled out in an Oct. 18 letter to lawmakers—is nothing more than a duplicate of what the federal government already requires for spills.

They also say the amount is very small, considering that the cost of an ongoing cleanup of a heavy crude spill in Michigan is nearing $700 million.

"The bond is merely grandstanding with big numbers intended to impress the uninformed," attorney Paul Blackburn told InsideClimate News. He tracked oil pipelines for the advocacy organization Plains Justice and now advises Bold Nebraska, a coalition of Keystone XL opponents.

In an interview, TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard was unable to answer questions about when or how the bond would kick in, or how much his company would have to pay for it. In a memo to legislators, TransCanada said only that the $100 million would be available if the company "does not clean up a spill in the Sandhills."

WASHINGTON—Any day now, the EPA will be weighing in with an analysis of the State Department's final environmental evaluation of the controversial oil sands Keystone XL pipeline.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said Friday that authorities from her agency's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance will be responding to the document, which was released Aug. 26, within "the next week or so."