TOPEKA, Kan. - As protests took place in Canada, American environmentalists told officials from the U.S. State Department on Monday they opposed the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, claiming it would move a "dirtier" and "environmentally devastating form of energy" from Canada through Kansas and other states to the Texas coast.
Rabbi Moti Rieber, co-ordinator of the Kansas Interfaith Power & Light, said he and others in his coalition disagreed with the State Department's report, which said there are unlikely to be any serious environmental problems with the proposed 2,700-kilometre pipeline.
Rieber said he strongly opposed the pipeline, which he called a "direct threat" to the Kansas environment.
"Exploring tar sands will keep us hooked on this form of oil for another 50 years," Rieber said. "The Keystone XL pipeline represents not energy independence but a new dependence on an even dirtier environmentally devastating form of energy.
"An energy policy that moves the nation toward an even dirtier form of oil and involves such devastation of God's creation represents a profound moral failure," he said.
In Ottawa, several hundred people showed up on Parliament Hill to protest the pipeline plans and the growth in the oilsands industry.
The demonstration was organized by Greenpeace and other groups who say the pipeline from Alberta to Texas is harmful to the environment in both Canada and the United States.
In Kansas, Republican Gov. Sam Brownback kicked off the meeting, attended by about 200 supporters and opponents. Brownback said that while he supports exploring alternative energy sources like wind and solar, he also supports building the $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline because "for the foreseeable able future we're going to need oil."
"I think this is an important security for the United States," Brownback said. "I have been at the front end and the back end of this pipeline. I have been where the oil sands are developed and processed in Canada, and I've been to oil refineries in Kansas where they use the oil sands," he said.
"The idea of us being able ... to have that oil source from a friendly nation that's next door rather than shipping oil in tankers from half way around the world in a many times unstable environment is a good thing for us. It's a good thing for America, a good thing for Kansas."
David Barnett, financial secretary for the Pipeliners Union 798, of Tulsa, Okla., said losing the pipeline would cost his members "up in the millions of dollars" in paycheques.
"If common sense prevails it should get approved," Barnett said before the three-hour meeting began. "We have the world's best welders, pipefitters ... ready to build this project, and I think this project will start literally the next day once they decide."
Several other members of labour unions, citing high unemployment figures and tough economy, also said they want to see the project move forward.
The pipeline would move oilsands crude from northern Alberta and hook up to Calgary-based TransCanada's (TSX:TRP) existing pipelines and move oil to Oklahoma and the Gulf of Mexico.
The meetings Monday in Topeka and Port Arthur, Tex., kick off this week's series of hearings.
Officials from the State Department said they don't plan to answer any questions, reserving most of the time for comments from the public.
Other meetings have been scheduled this week in Montana, South Dakota, Oklahoma and Nebraska. Even in that deeply conservative state there is growing concern about the pipeline's effect on the Ogallala Aquifer, a vast subterranean reservoir that spans a large swath of the Great Plains and provides water to much of Nebraska and seven other states.
The State Department, which has to approve the pipeline because it would cross the U.S.-Canada border, is expected to decide by the end of the year. The sessions are likely to focus on the department's final draft of its environmental impact statement on the pipeline, which found that special conditions put on the pipeline would result in a project with a "degree of safety greater than any typically constructed domestic oil pipeline system under current regulations."
TransCanada and its supporters say the pipeline would mean tens of thousands of U.S. jobs and more energy security for the country.
"If the activists feel that they're facing an uphill battle, it's because the facts don't support their overheated rhetoric," TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard said earlier. "It has been shown that the outrageous claims these groups have made aren't true."
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper told reporters in New York over the weekend that U.S. approval of the oil pipeline is a "no-brainer" since the project would bring thousands of jobs and also ensure a secure source of energy for the United States.
