The Tense Trail Of The Keystone XL Pipeline

We’ll follow the path of the Keystone XL Pipeline from Canada’s Tar Sands country through the heart of America and hear the furious debate over its fate.

After five years of debate, the US State Department is out with its long-awaited report on the environmental impact of a Keystone XL pipeline – if and when it’s ever built.  Tar sands.  Down from Canada.  The report’s bottom line is not what livid environmental protestors wanted to hear.  Yes, it’s dirty, it says.  Bad.  But one way or another – this pipe or that pipe or train – it’s likely coming.  Environmentalists say that’s “game over” for the climate.  They’re fighting all the way. Writer Tony Horwitz is on the scene.  This hour On Point:  on the embattled would-be trail of the Keystone XL.
-- Tom Ashbrook

Coral Davenport, energy and environment correspondent for the New York Times. (@CoralMDavenport)

Tony Horwitz,  author and journalist. Author of the new book "BOOM: Oil, Money, Cowboys, Strippers, and the Energy Rush That Could Change America Forever." Also author of "Confederates in the Attic," "Blue Latitudes," "Baghdad Without a Map," "A Voyage Long and Strange" and "Midnight Rising." (@tonyhorwitz)

New York Times: Report May Ease Way to Approval of Keystone Pipeline — "The long-awaited environmental impact statement on the project concludes that approval or denial of the pipeline, which would carry 830,000 barrels of oil a day from Alberta to the Gulf Coast, is unlikely to prompt oil companies to change the rate of their extraction of carbon-heavy tar sands oil, a State Department official said. Either way, the tar sands oil, which produces significantly more planet-warming carbon pollution than standard methods of drilling, is coming out of the ground, the report says."

U.S. State Department: Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement — "There is existing demand for crude oil—particularly heavy crude oil—at refiners in the Gulf Coast area, but  the ultimate disposition of crude oil that would be  transported by the proposed Project, as well as any  refined products produced from that crude oil, would also be determined by market demand and applicable law."

The Walrus: Big Mac — "Until recently, Alberta has been slow to release Crown land to the municipality, mostly because it sits on vast reserves of bitumen. Work is finally set to begin on two new suburban developments, each on the scale of Eagle Ridge, which will provide housing for at least 50,000 people. By 2030, Fort McMurray could be a city of almost a quarter million."