‘Team Canada’ pushing U.S. for Keystone XL permit
‘Team Canada’ pushing U.S. for Keystone XL permit at every level: Harper
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Bloomberg News
Friday, Apr. 12, 2013
Prime Minister Stephen Harper. CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada is pressing the U.S. on every diplomatic level to approve TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline.
“We are doing that at every level of the government and in coordination with the province of Alberta and others,” Harper said at an even in Calgary. “We really do have a Team Canada approach to this.”
Harper said he has spoken to President Barack Obama about the proposed pipeline on “several occasions.”
“This is a matter that I think is vital to both the economic growth and energy security, not just of all of Canada, but the United States as well,” he said.
Environmental groups including the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council oppose the Keystone pipeline, which would carry crude from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. The U.S. State Department is reviewing the US$5.3-billion project because it would cross an international border.
Alberta Premier Alison Redford said this week the province is taking steps to limit the environmental damage of building the pipeline through measures such as caps on greenhouse-gas emissions. Redford was scheduled to meet members of Congress during a two-day visit to Washington, her fourth in 18 months.
Obama has said he will make a decision on an application from Calgary-based TransCanada for the project by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, Alberta Premier Alison Redford says she’s not worried that her frequent trips to Washington, D.C., to promote the Keystone XL oil pipeline will create an overexposure problem with the American public.
Redford has visited Washington four times since she became premier 18 months ago. She has attracted the attention of anti-Keystone protesters, including some who repeatedly interrupted her speech to the Brookings Institution last week.
“The challenge is to make sure that your story is heard,” Redford told reporters prior to her annual leader’s dinner in Calgary on Thursday.
“If you are lucky enough to be one of those people where your story is heard too much and no one wants to hear from you anymore then you’ve just done an excellent job.”
Redford said there are key discussions in committee rooms at both the Congressional and Senate levels regarding Keystone XL and it is essential to keep Alberta’s message front and centre.
“I’ll tell you that every opportunity that we have to go to Washington … to talk to decision makers is critical and particularly so right now,” she said.
“From our perspective it’s important to be there to keep saying what we’ve been saying, to make sure people know what we’re doing in Alberta, what our values are, what our environmental record is.”
The pipeline has become a flashpoint in the U.S. debate over climate change. Republicans and business and labour groups have urged the Obama administration to approve the pipeline as a source of much-needed jobs and a step toward North American energy independence.
Environmental groups have been pressuring President Barack Obama to reject the pipeline, saying it would carry “dirty oil” that contributes to global warming. They also worry about a spill and have mounted an aggressive advertising campaign critical of Keystone.
“I think some of them are absolutely ridiculous,” Redford said.
“There are a lot of those ads and we’ve got to pay attention to them. That’s one of the reasons that we invested in ads to make sure the record is clear and the facts are on the table.”
The Prime Minister said he was glad to see Redford working hard to “tell our story of the actions we are taking here in Alberta and across the country.”
Bloomberg News with files from Canadian Press
Posted in: Energy Tags: Alison Redford, Keystone Pipeline, Keystone XL, The Brookings Institution