Clinton: Keystone pipeline likely to be approved

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked at an appearance before the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry tar sands crude oil from Alberta, Canada all the way to Texas. Her rather flippant response indicated that the pipeline is likely to be approved:

Question: Another international issue that you signed in on last year was the Alberta Clipper, a pipeline from Alberta that brings tar sands, oil sands directly into Wisconsin to the U.S. Midwest. This is some of the dirtiest fuel in the world. And how can the U.S. be saying climate change is a priority when we’re mainlining some of the dirtiest fuel that exists. (Applause.)

Secretary Clinton: Well, there hasn’t been a final decision made. It is -

Question: Are you willing to reconsider it?

Secretary Clinton: Probably not. (Laughter.) And we – but we haven’t finish all of the analysis. So as I say, we’ve not yet signed off on it. But we are inclined to do so and we are for several reasons – going back to one of your original questions – we’re either going to be dependent on dirty oil from the Gulf or dirty oil from Canada. And until we can get our act together as a country and figure out that clean, renewable energy is in both our economic interests and the interests of our planet – (applause) – I mean, I don’t think it will come as a surprise to anyone how deeply disappointed the President and I are about our inability to get the kind of legislation through the Senate that the United States was seeking.

In reality, crude oil from the Persian Gulf in the Middle East is considerably less dirty than tar sands crude, which requires extremely high amounts of water and energy to extract and refine and which contains much higher levels of heavy metals.

Because this pipeline crosses the Canadian border, the State Department has to approve it. Other federal agencies like the EPA have spoken out about the negative effect on the environment from the project.