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Clinton supports XL pipeline

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Bill Clinton on Keystone XL pipeline: 'Embrace' it


By DARIUS DIXON and DAN BERMAN | 2/29/12 1:46 PM EST

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#ixzz1nvJYaNi0
 
hypocritexposer said:
His wife was behind it too. The State Dept. already gave it the go ahead.

Yep- it was set to go until the NIMBY'S got involved.. Their new application going around Nebraska will get approved .....

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.
 
I would have loved to be at the Clinton House tonight after Bill came out supporting the pipeline and Hillary was asked about what he said and her response was, well can we say TENSE. :wink: :lol: She laughed then said he was a smart man but he doesn't have to abide by the rules that govern the process of approving the pipeline anymore.

Bill is not making Hillary's job any easier when he gets in front of the cameras, which we all know he loves to do, and comments about things that her office is in charge of. Especially when he is on the opposing side of the issue. :wink:

WASHINGTON - Former U.S. president Bill Clinton has thrown his support behind TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline, the controversial project whose ultimate fate is in the hands of his wife.

Clinton, the keynote speaker at the Department of Energy's conference for clean-technology startup companies, wondered aloud on Wednesday why TransCanada didn't originally propose to build the pipeline around the environmentally sensitive Ogallala aquifer in Nebraska.

"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 have gone around the Nebraska Sand Hills and avoided most of the dangers, no matter how imagined, to the Ogallala with a different route," he said at the event in Maryland.

"The extra cost of (rerouting the pipeline) is infinitesimal compared to the revenue that will be generated over a long period of time," he added.

"So, I think we should embrace it and develop a stakeholder-driven system of high standards for doing the work."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, testifying later in the day to the House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, was asked about her husband's remarks.

"He's a very smart man," she said to laughter.

"But he, unfortunately, is not bound by the laws and regulations any longer of the United States to make decisions that follow a certain procedure. And that's what we have to do."

Bill Clinton's comments will almost certainly cause a stir given his wife has already been accused of a pro-pipeline bias by the sea of American environmentalists who oppose Keystone XL. The State Department is deciding the fate of the $7.6 billion pipeline since it crosses an international border.

"Obviously we disagree with his support of the pipeline," said Susan Casey Lefkowitz of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "It's never good to have the spouse of the secretary of state commenting on something where she may be the decision-maker..... snip"
Read it on Global News: Global News | Bill Clinton puts in good word for Keystone XL; wife to decide its fate
 

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