Politics provided an interesting sideshow to the unsuccessful, ironic, last-minute push in the 113th Congress for sanction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The oil and gas industry shouldn't let that passing amusement distract it from what truly was at stake.
The Senate on Nov. 18 defeated a bill, identical to one passed earlier by the House, that would have approved the border crossing and deemed all requirements to have been satisfied. Consideration of the bill was a gift to Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) from Democratic leaders heretofore loath to act. Landrieu faces a Dec. 6 runoff election against Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who is ahead in polls. The Senate vote on Keystone XL enabled a desperate senator representing an oil and gas state to support an important energy measure and to distance herself from politically toxic President Barack Obama.
Limited consequence
The legislation's one-vote failure in the Senate to win the 60 votes needed to block a filibuster has limited consequence. If the bill had passed, Obama would have vetoed it. The outcome spared the president the need to alienate labor unions and told Landrieu, well, tough luck. The Senate will vote again on the measure when Republicans take control next year, and Obama will veto it then. He can't afford to alienate activists committed to blocking Keystone XL, some of whom displayed the sophistication of their views with a prevote demonstration outside Landrieu's home, complete with an inflatable pipeline mock-up. Members of theatrical minorities pushing radical agendas represent a growing share of Obama's rapidly shrinking political support.
Especially while Obama remains in office, the oil and gas industry must not ignore fringe groups whose antics, in a perfectly rational world, would be self-discrediting. Activism works. With Keystone XL, it has kept a rational, strategically and economically important project in the planning stage for 6 years. Unless Obama decides he needs the support of labor unions more than that of environmentalists, the delay will last 2 years more.
Environmental obstructionism is tactically effective and needs to be addressed at that level. Even more important is the strategy propelling it, which deserves stronger response. The industry, though, seems reluctant to fight the strategic war. It wages tactical battles well, arguing cogently and systematically, for example, to defend besieged projects such as Keystone XL or processes such as hydraulic fracturing. Sometimes it wins.
Yet the extremist strategy, amounting to existential resistance to the production and use of fossil energy, persists. Increasingly, the strategy targets activity related to unconventional oil and gas resources and their collective promise to extend widespread use of fossil energy many decades into the future. That promise contradicts environmentalists' yearning for a quick shift to carbon-free-and therefore high-cost-energy. So extremists marshal resistance-in Congress, courts, agencies, and streets-to important work. The Senate vote not only showed the strategy effectively in action but also evoked enunciations of purpose that shouldn't be overlooked.
Forgoing development
One such statement appeared in USA Today the day before senators jilted Keystone XL and Landrieu. The newspaper presented a sensible editorial supporting approval of project. It also printed an opposing view from Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth US. He argued: "The Keystone XL pipeline would stimulate the development of the Canadian tar sands, which would lead to more greenhouse gas emissions and lock in fossil fuel infrastructure at a time when scientists are sounding the alarms on the need to leave fossil fuels in the ground."
Few scientists go that far. Most scientists apply economic judgment to their decision-making. Forgoing development of fossil-energy resources is in fact a priority goal of extremists. It's the strategy driving opposition to specific projects. The oil and gas industry must continue to wage those tactical battles with facts and arguments, of course. But the industry also should confront, with whatever it must, an untenably antidevelopment strategy that seeks nothing less than to shut it down.