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Forum Post: Bill Clinton on Keystone XL pipeline: 'Embrace' it.

Posted 11 years ago on March 18, 2013, 2:40 a.m. EST by PeterKropotkin (1050) from Oakland, CA
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

Bill Clinton says it's time to build the Keystone XL pipeline. Speaking at an Energy Department conference in Maryland on Wednesday, the former president said he was surprised the project has gotten as gummed up as it has, laying the blame on pipeline builder TransCanada.

"One of the most amazing things to me about this Keystone pipeline deal is that they ever filed that route in the first place since they could've gone around the Nebraska Sandhills and avoided most of the dangers, no matter how imagined, to the Ogallala [aquifer] with a different route, which I presume we'll get now, because the extra cost of running is infinitesimal compared to the revenue that will be generated over a long period of time," he said.

"So, I think we should embrace it and develop a stakeholder-driven system of high standards for doing the work," Clinton added. TransCanada this week said it would begin building a section of the pipeline from Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast and reapply for a new permit for the remainder of the project.

Meanwhile, Clinton said he worries that increased domestic oil and natural gas production could allow many in the U.S. to lose interest in investing in other, newer cleaner forms of energy. "There are some hazards to the innovation project, right now. We have massive new recovery technologies in oil and gas which could lead us down the primrose path of thinking [that] we don't have to keep using less energy and developing clean energy and technologies," he said. "A lot of people are saying, 'Let's just go for this and nothing else,'" he said, after discussing the oil production in places like the Bakken Shale in North Dakota. Clinton added: "The recent spike in gas prices reminds us of the fragility of relying on just the way we used to do things, not the increasingly apparent cost of fossil fuels on our health and our ecosystem." In projections released last month, the Energy Information Administration forecast that net petroleum imports will shrink to 36 percent of total U.S. liquid fuel consumption by 2035. That's down from 49 percent in 2010 and well below the peak of 60 percent reached in 2005. That news came two months after the EIA reported that 2011 was likely to see the U.S. become a net exporter of petroleum products — including gasoline and jet fuel — for the first time in 62 years.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/73445.html#ixzz2Ns3qoGcf

From the man that brought us NAFTA and the repeall of glass steagal!

7 Comments

7 Comments


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[-] 1 points by Theeighthpieceuv8 (-32) from Seven Sisters, Wales 11 years ago

It's economic, it's going forward regardless.

[-] 1 points by bensdad (8977) 11 years ago

I find this very disappointing - that Clinton would support this.
It helps his union friends with jobs but puts the land at risk -
and America will not get any of the oil!
build & use a train line
a safer choice + jobs = better solution

[-] 0 points by OTP (-203) from Tampa, FL 11 years ago

A few thousand jobs is helping the unions? Why doesn't he try campaigning on reversing those god awful free trade deals? Or reinstating Glass Steagall?

Because he's a corporatist. Just like the other leaders of both parties.

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20120117/keystone-xl-jobs-unions-transcanada-construction-liuna-unemployment-state-department-cornell

[-] 1 points by itsmyblood (10) 11 years ago

Bill I am not embracing it, I am not touching it, put it back in your pants and zip it up.

[-] 0 points by gnomunny (6819) from St Louis, MO 11 years ago

Slick Willy's a lying, hypocritical POS. Always has been, always will be.

[-] 0 points by OTP (-203) from Tampa, FL 11 years ago

He does make a good point about the route though. There is already a pipeline that goes from Canada to the south. If they had just followed that route, no one would have heard a thing about it, probably.

The amount of the bailouts the last 5 years is enough money to put a 35k solar system on every house in the country. That would have made us, energy wise, a green nation overnight.

Hopefully people wake up soon.

[-] 3 points by gnomunny (6819) from St Louis, MO 11 years ago

Willy's a smart man, no doubt about that. And good observation about what the bailout money could have been used for. And people do seem to be waking up, slowly. Gotta keep plugging away at raising awareness.