Keystone XL nod welcome, but antioil fanaticism lingers

Overdue approval of the Keystone XL pipeline border crossing solves half the problem.

US President Donald Trump did his part by issuing the presidential permit denied by his predecessor.

However welcome, Trump’s move doesn’t guarantee the project will proceed. An eminent-domain challenge lingers in Nebraska. Advocacy groups will sue.

Still, solutions have moved into view for Keystone XL’s permitting problem.

The unsolved remainder is the fanaticism that has hitched pipeline opposition to the campaign against hydrocarbon energy.

“If we’re going to prevent large parts of this earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes,” former President Barack Obama said when he rejected Keystone XL in November 2015, “we’re going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky.”

Before laying this offering on the environmental altar, Obama dared to acknowledge, “The United States will continue to rely on oil and gas as we transition—as we must transition—to a clean energy economy. That transition will take some time.”

Rejection of Keystone XL nevertheless turned pipeline proposals into targets of an obstructionist strategy with no patience for transitions.

The opposition doesn’t confine itself to oil pipelines. It also impedes work on gas lines needed to debottleneck huge potential of the Marcellus and Utica shales.

Because gas development has done more than anything to moderate emissions of carbon dioxide, resistance to it exposes the thoughtlessness of antipipeline politics.

The mere promise of new supplies of oil, gas, or coal provokes protests by groups demanding immediate conversion to carbon-free energy.

That impulse is impracticable but firmly in place. While too costly to succeed, the agenda it propels can hobble projects and distort policy-making.

Trump has shoved antioil fanaticism to the political margin. But the movement won’t stay there forever. It has to be discredited.

Correction of Obama’s policy errors is important and necessary. But it does not address an intellectual contest the industry has to win.

(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted Mar. 24, 2017; author’s e-mail: [email protected])