CUSHING, Okla. — President Barack Obama firmly defended his record on oil drilling Thursday, ordering the government to fast-track an Oklahoma pipeline while accusing Congress of playing politics with a larger Canadato-Gulf Coast project.
In an appearance near the oil town of Cushing, known in the industry as the nation’s pipeline crossroads, Obama said lawmakers refused to give his administration enough time to review the 1,170-mile Keystone XL pipeline to ensure that it wouldn’t compromise the health and safety of people living in surrounding areas.
The speech, which he delivered framed by stacks of pipes awaiting assembly, was intended to blunt months of criticism from Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail of his decision in January to reject for now construction of the pipeline’s northern leg from the Canadian province of Alberta to Cushing.
“Unfortunately, Congress decided they wanted their own timeline,” Obama said. “Not the company, not the experts, but members of Congress who decided this might be a fun political issue decided to try to intervene and make it impossible for us to make an informed decision.”
Facing fresh criticism from Republicans who blame him for gas prices near $4 a gallon, Obama announced Thursday that he was directing federal agencies to expedite the southern segment of the Keystone line. The 485-mile line will run from Cushing to refineries on Texas’ Gulf Coast, removing a bottleneck in the country’s oil transportation system. The directive also would apply to other pipelines that alleviate choke points.
“Anyone who says that we’re somehow suppressing domestic oil production isn’t paying attention,” Obama said, speaking at the site of the new Oklahoma project. “Anyone who says that just drilling more will bring gas prices down also isn’t paying attention; they’re not playing it straight. We are drilling more. We are producing more. But the fact is, producing more oil at home isn’t enough by itself to bring gas prices down overnight.
“The fact is, my administration has approved dozens of new oil and gas pipelines over the last three years — including one from Canada,” he added. “And as long as I’m president, we’re going to keep on encouraging oil development and infrastructure, and we’re going to do it in a way that protects the health and safety of the American people.”
Shawn Howard, a spokesman for pipeline owner TransCanada, said the company welcomed Obama’s support for the Oklahomato-Texas part of the pipeline but couldn’t say whether his involvement would affect the timeline for completing the project.
Construction is expected to begin in June with completion next year. TransCanada is awaiting permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the last it needs to begin work, according to the company.
Welspun Corp. Ltd. of Bombay, India, which makes pipes at a Little Rock plant, has manufactured about 800 miles of pipe that was to be used in the Keystone pipeline. With work on the pipe begun in 2010, about 100 miles of the pipe was made in India, and about 700 miles of the pipe was made in Little Rock.
ENVIRONMENTALISTS’ NO
Environmentalists nationwide have rallied to oppose the entire Canada-to-Gulf Coast pipeline because Trans-Canada wants to transport what environmental groups consider dirty oil from the tar sands of Alberta. The groups say such oil would hasten climate change, threaten spills and pollute air, water and wildlife.
The National Wildlife Federation, a Reston, Va.-based group, calls the Cushing leg “Keystone Lite” because the project will eventually promote production from Canada’s oil sands, to which environmental groups object.
Susan Casey-Lefkowitz of the Natural Resources Defense Council said it was “downright foolhardy to cut corners on safety reviews for permitting” the Texas-to-Oklahoma line, “especially when the industry has a history of oil spills.”
Obama’s order urges speedy review of the Cushing project and directs federal agencies to incorporate previous environmental studies of the Keystone proposal that included the southern route.
The administration, and specifically the State Department, must approve a permit for the pipeline to cross the border between Canada and the United States, a process that requires exhaustive environmental studies. Obama rejected TransCanada’s initial path through the Ogallala Aquifer in Nebraska, a route opposed by many Nebraskans as well, but the company plans to resubmit its application for an alternate route.
The use of previous studies should help move the project forward more quickly than if a review of the project started from scratch, although it’s unclear exactly how much time the expedited review will save.
‘ALL OF THE ABOVE’ POLICY
With his four-state swing this week, Obama is promoting what he calls his “all of the above” energy policy to reduce consumption of and dependence on foreign oil, goals to be achieved by government support for clean-energy alternatives and for domestic oil and natural gas and by increased fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles.
Before a boisterous crowd at Ohio State University on Thursday, Obama said his administration had shown a commitment to drilling all over the nation, then mocked his critics again, saying he did have his limits. “I’m not drilling in the South Lawn,” he said. “We’re not drilling next to the Washington Monument.”
In the midst of his prepared comments, Obama was unusually sharp in admonishing a protester who was interrupting his speech. The president told the man that he would read the book he was apparently offering but said: “Show me some courtesy.”
Obama contrasts his “all of the above” agenda with what he characterizes as Republicans’ drilling-only agenda. Seeking to turn the tables on his Republican critics, Obama, by stops like the one in Oklahoma, has tried to show that he is not hostile to oil and gas production, even as he charges that Republicans are hostile to clean-energy incentives.
Instead of a drilling-only agenda, he said in Oklahoma, an “all-of-the-above strategy” means encouraging with tax and spending incentives more biofuels, fuel-efficient cars, solar power and wind power — “which, by the way, has nearly tripled here in Oklahoma over the past three years, in part because of some of our policies.”
HEAVY GOP FLAK
Even before Obama reached Oklahoma on the final day of a two-day energy tour, Republicans were deriding the Oklahoma stop as a publicity stunt, since the only federal permits that the Cushing-to-Gulf pipeline needs are ones typically handled by government agency employees — not the president.
“He claims that he wants to address rising gas prices, but his policies are actually making matters worse for families and small businesses,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said. He later added, ”There’s only one permit that requires his approval, because it crosses our national boundaries, and that’s the Keystone decision on the upper half” of the project that extends into Canada.
GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, campaigning this week at a Harvey, La., company that services oil rigs, said Obama’s administration should open more federal lands for leases to boost U.S. oil production and revenue for the federal government.
“Here’s an opportunity for us in this country to do something about it: increasing jobs, lowering energy prices, decreasing the deficit, all of the things you would think the president of the United States would be for,” Santorum said.
As gasoline prices have risen to the $4-a-gallon mark nationwide, Republicans have stepped up their attacks against Obama’s decision, claiming it stands in the way of lower pump prices and thousands of construction jobs. The administration counters that the job figures are inflated and that oil from the pipeline would not reach markets anytime soon.
Mitt Romney, Santorum’s chief rival for the Republican nomination, has labeled Obama’s top energy advisers the “gas hike trio,” urging the president to fire Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson because of the high prices.
Information for this article was contributed by Ken Thomas, Matthew Daly and Ramit Plushnick-Masti of The Associated Press; by Jackie Calmes of The New York Times; by Scott Wilson of The Washington Post; by Julianna Goldman, Roger Runningen, James Rowley, Jim Snyder, Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Bradley Olson, Mike Lee, Mark Shenk and John McCormick of Bloomberg News; and by David Smith of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/23/2012