State Department Denies Pipeline Decision Was Politically Motivated

A State Department spokesman denied Tuesday that politics influenced last week’s decision to postpone approval for a new 1,700-mile-long oil pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf of Mexico.

“The White House had no bearing on this decision-making process,” the Department’s deputy spokesperson, Mark Toner, said at Tuesday’s daily press briefing. “The State Department has the lead on this issue and we’re going about it in a very transparent and apolitical way.”

The decision to postpone the approval in order to carry out an environmental review followed months of protests directed at President Obama from environmental groups and concerned property owners in the states that would be affected by the pipeline’s construction. In a statement regarding the decision on Thursday, President Obama said, “we should take the time to ensure that…all the potential impacts are properly understood.”

The proposed pipeline, to be built by the TransCanada Corporation, would carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta to refineries on Texas’ Gulf Coast. Proponents of the plan say it would create tens of thousands of jobs and reduce the U.S.’s dependence on oil from overseas.

The plan’s opponents argue that the pipeline’s proposed route, which takes it over a massive water aquifer that provides water to eight states, poses an unacceptable risk in case of a spill. They also claim that extracting oil from Alberta’s tar sands would accelerate carbon dioxide pollution.

Because the proposed pipeline crosses a U.S. border, the State Department has the power to approve or deny a permit for its construction.

At today’s briefing, Toner said the Department did not anticipate finishing its evaluation until the first quarter of 2013, reaffirming its earlier estimates of the decision-making timeline.  This would push back the final decision until well after the 2012 elections.

Toner stated that the Department was approaching the decision “in a very deliberate fashion” and trying to address all of the issues in its decision-making process.

Asked to respond to claims that denying a permit for the pipeline would result in the oil being shipped to China, where environmental regulations are far more lax and the environmental effects of oil refining potentially more harmful, Toner said, “it would not be responsible for us to simply focus on one area of concern and disregard the others.”

Toner also stated that the U.S.’s relationship with Canada, whose government supports the pipeline plan, remains “strong and intact.”