There is no question that if Americans want to see relief from high prices at the pump, we need to expand our domestic supply. Once referring to oil as “yesterday’s energy,” it’s encouraging to see the President now promote things like domestic oil exploration by expanding access to offshore and onshore reserves.

Extension of the Keystone pipeline will also be a useful step to help the administration meet its one-third reduction of imported oil goal and also promote much needed job growth here at home.

As Jack Gerard notes, Canada's oil reserves are second only to Saudia Arabia and could provide the U.S. with a robust 830,000 barrels of oil a day in the future.

Increased supply, reduced dependence on foreign oil and job growth are factors that are difficult to ignore and should be guiding the administration's evaluation process.

The Obama administration needs to stop the Keystone XL pipeline. TransCanada’s proposed pipeline would carry more than 900,000 barrels per day of the dirtiest oil available -- oil from Canada's tar sands. Extraction of oil from the tar sands in Alberta may be the most ecologically destructive project ever undertaken, destroying forests, poisoning indigenous communities, and producing three times the carbon pollution of traditional oil.

The pipeline would cut across the heart of the United States, endangering people and the environment from Montana to Texas, including the Ogallala Aquifer, from which millions of Americans get their drinking water. The threat of spills is not far-fetched – a 21,000 gallon spill in North Dakota early this month was the 11th breach of TransCanada’s other tar sands pipeline, Keystone 1, which has been in operation for only 11 months. The safety risks of tar sands oil are many, from the heightened oil spill concerns and increased air pollution from refineries to the effects of the extraction on people who live downstream. Not to mention the unprecedented destruction involved in simply removing the oil from the ground.

The Keystone XL would do nothing to improve energy security. TransCanada's own assessment shows that the oil pumped across the border through the pipeline would mostly displace domestically produced supplies and have "only minimal" impacts on U.S. oil imports from overseas. If we want energy security, we're far better off investing in energy efficiency and clean energy sources including wind, solar, and geothermal.

With opposition rising along the pipeline’s path – from hostile public meetings in oil-friendly Texas to Republican Nebraska Senator Mike Johanns saying that until his concerns about the environmental impact are addressed, he “cannot support moving forward with this project” – TransCanada has been resorting to desperate measures to secure final approval. Friends of the Earth published a report called “Dirty Business” last month, detailing how TransCanada bullies farmers and ranchers in America’s heartland into giving up their land, misleads the American public about the safety risks of the project, and tries to manipulate American oil markets for its own profit. Beyond that, several watchdog groups, including Friends of the Earth, sued the State Department last week because it has failed to disclose information about the relationship between Secretary Clinton and TransCanada’s chief lobbyist, former Clinton campaign staffer Paul Elliot. This potential conflict of interest taints the entire permitting process.

Oil pipelines are inherently dangerous, putting our communities and drinking water at risk of oil spills. The Obama administration should reject TransCanada and its risky tar sands pipeline proposal.

Canada and the U.S. have the world’s largest trading partnership and an excellent political relationship. Canada’s reliable and plentiful oil is crucial to improving our nation’s energy security and meeting its growing energy demand. Canada is already our leading supplier of non-domestic energy, and they are ready to do more.

The proposed extension of the Keystone pipeline – known as Keystone XL – will improve access to Canada’s vast oil reserves, which are second only to Saudi Arabia. By 2025, Canada’s oil sands production is expected to rise from 1.3 million barrels a day to about 3.3 million barrels a day. The Keystone pipeline could expand access to this vital resource by providing transportation for an additional 830,000 barrels of oil a day.

This is oil they want to provide us. This is oil we need.

But the pipeline isn’t just about energy. It’s also about jobs.

U.S. jobs supported by Canadian oil sands development could grow from 21,000 jobs today to 465,000 jobs by 2035. Construction of the pipeline alone would create 20,000 manufacturing jobs.

A recent analysis found almost 1000 U.S. companies in 47 states are already supplying materials, equipment, training, consulting or inspection services to support Canadian oil sands production operations: from Florida, to New York, to California.

The State Department recently released its second environmental study of the Keystone XL Pipeline project. Like the original study, it found no new issues of significance and we await the final decision expected at the end of this year.

American pipeline workers are trained and ready to start work as soon as the government permit is issued. State Department approval is one of the final steps. For the benefit of our economy and our energy security, the government should promptly approve this project.

First let’s acknowledge that Canada has a first-world environmental regulatory regime. The oil sands in Alberta are not being developed by 19th-century robber barons on a lawless frontier. There are strict regulations for petroleum production and for the reclamation of the disturbed surface.

Second, let’s acknowledge that blocking the XL pipeline won’t stop development of the oil sands. It will slow some of the development, which will increase the world price of petroleum. However, the major impact of blocking the pipeline would be a significant diversion of the oil to non-U.S. consumers.

So, block the XL pipeline if you think the environment will be better served by shipping Canadian oil an extra 6,000 miles across the Pacific in oil-consuming super tankers and then refining it in less-regulated Chinese refineries. In addition, be aware that replacing the Canadian oil means the U.S. also must import more oil by tankers, which are less efficient than pipelines.

In short, blocking the XL pipeline will substitute efficient pipeline transportation of oil for less efficient tanker transport. The net impact of blocking the XL pipeline is to prevent oil trade patterns from being the most cost-effective and most environmentally efficient. The pipeline makes sense no matter how you look at it.

There are a lot of controversial energy projects -- and then, in a class by itself, there is the Keystone Scamline. It has and continues to be sold as a project which will INCREASE supplies of Canadian tar sands oil in the US. In fact, it is designed to REDUCE supplies of tar sands oil available to US customers -- because the Koch Brothers and others who profit from tar sands oil are tired of the fact that gasoline in Missouri costs ONLY $3.67a gallon, while it is $4.07 in NY and $4.09 in California.

The problem is a simple one -- too much supply, not enough demand for maximum profiteerrings. The answer -- increase demand, not by building more pipeline capacity INTO the US, but by building new pipeline capacity OUT OF the country, via the Gulf. Koch and its allies don't want to refine this oil in the upper Midwest, and sell it their -- in fact, Valero has shut down one of its refineries in the region, a clear signal that the plan is to drain the Midwest first.

This goal is hidden in plain sight, a little bit like the key clue in a Sherlock Homes mystery. If you wanted to bring more tar sands oil INTO the US, you would begin by building the pipeline segment that crosses the border. That's not Keystone's plan -- they will FIRST build the segment from Cushing, Oklahoma, where they lament their tar sands gunk currently "pools up" to the Gulf Coast refineries, for shipment wherever the price is highest -- which won't be the Midwest.

And the major competitor to Keystone doesn't even pretend to be bringing more oil to the US -- they only want to build the segment from Oklahoma to the Gulf. Yet for months the backers of Keystone have incessantly presented their plan as one that will increase US energy security by bringing us more filthy tar sands oil. The reality is that this is not an imports scheme, but an exports scam. The US gets the water pollution risk to the Ogallala Aquifer, the private property expropritations in Texas, and the air pollution around the refineries -- plus gasoline prices that may run $0.30/gallon more than they otherwise would. Koch, Valero and their allies get higher profits and greater volume -- because they finally get what they have always wanted, access to the highest price world markets.

Yet none of these impacts have been assessed in the documents sitting before the Administration -- because everyone is pretending that Keystone will increase oil supplies, rather than decreasing them.

This has got to the biggest energy scam going. Its shameful that even the National Journal, in setting up this dialogue, bought into the idea that this is a proposal to increase US oil supplies.

It's not drill baby, drill. It's drain, baby, drain.

Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton's bill to hurry the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline through its permitting process at the State Department will raise, not lower, gas prices for his constituents.

This surprising fact comes from TransCanada, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline. That's right, the pipeline will actually raise gas prices in Mr. Upton’s home region by enabling Canadian companies to send crude now serving the Midwest to Gulf Coast refineries instead. See here (p. 41), where TransCanada reveals that the pipeline will “relieve the oversupply situation in the Midwest” by letting the company move tar sands oil to Gulf Coast refineries. This is a pipeline that will benefit oil companies and their profits, not the American people as a whole. And it will even hurt Mr. Upton’s constituents.

From a carbon pollution perspective, we should be asking whether this pipeline should be built at all. Producing oil from tar sands causes more than three times the carbon pollution from conventional oil production. A better bet is for EPA and the Transportation Department to set stronger clean car standards: By cutting new cars’ carbon pollution and fuel use we can reduce our overall dependence on oil – not shift to greater production of ever dirtier and more polluting forms of oil.

Tar sands oil is dirty and destructive, and the proposed Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline won’t reduce gas prices. Instead, this pipeline will perpetuate our dependence on oil, with all its attending problems of climate change and high energy costs. Given the major consequences involved in locking ourselves into tar sands oil, this pipeline should not be rushed—not through an expedited State Department process or through legislation.

And yet recently the State Department issued a supplemental environmental review after the EPA deemed its first round inadequate. Unfortunately, the department failed once again to do its homework and only gave superficial treatment to serious questions of need, greenhouse gas emissions, pipeline safety, environmental justice around refineries, and alternative routes to the current proposal to cross the Ogallala Aquifer—the source of freshwater for eight states.

The department only gave 45 days for public comment and has completely disregarded the many requests from farmers and landowners for hearings along the proposed route. Farmers, mayors, clean energy business leaders, environmental groups and members of Congress have become increasingly concerned about the pipeline, yet their voices haven’t been heard.

The President should be listening to these concerns and making sure that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline permitting process collects all relevant information for making a decision.

There is plenty of time to get the debate over tar sands and this pipeline right. It will be nearly 15 years before tar sands oil production catches up with already existing U.S. pipeline capacity. The proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is about taking oil that would otherwise go to the U.S. Midwest and moving it instead to the Gulf Coast.

Is this pipeline about gas prices? No. In fact, this diversion of oil will cause gas prices to rise further in the Midwest. Is this about U.S. security of oil supply? No. In fact, bringing tar sands oil to the Gulf Coast gives it the first deepwater port from which it can go anywhere in the world, since pipeline proposals to the Canadian coasts have not been able to get approval. The proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is about oil industry desire to bring in more profits. We should not fool ourselves that this pipeline brings any benefit to the American people.

We need to let the best information drive the outcome of this proposal. The State Department has yet to collect this material in a thorough and accurate way. The Administration should take the time to get this pipeline decision right. And once it does, we believe the choice is clear: this pipeline is unnecessary and has no place in a clean energy future.

I testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, on March 31, 2011 on this: http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/112/sul033111.pdf

1. There is no basis to the argument that gasoline prices will go up due to the pipeline. Increrasing supply does not increase price.

2. There is no basis to the argument that this oil will go to refineries owned by Hugo Chavez and the Saudis in Texas. There are only two of these and one joint venture. A massive proportion of the refinery capacity in Texas is owned by US companies, such as Exxon, Conoco, Veloro etc. The refinery capacity of the "Chavez refineries" is tiny.

3. There is no basis to the argument that most of this oil would be refined and sent out of the country. About 90-95 percent would stay in the US, depending on the markets available outside, relative prices of the gas in different markets, etc. The US is the largest market for gasoline in the world. This oil sent to upgraed refineries in Texas, etc. would increase the supply of gasoline to US markets and hence releive price pressures.

4. The price of gasoline is mostly determined by the price of oil. The price of oil, by different varieties, is determined mostly globally on oil exhanges, spot markets and future markets, as well as by political, weather, and many other events varaibles.

5. This pipeline could be seen as an energy security bridge to a more sustainable energy and transport future. Most of our oil use goes to transport. It will take time to transition to new transport methods and means and there needs to be reason involved in the medium term decisions that lead into the long term changes. Otherwise, we will put the energy and economic security of this country at great risk.

Please read the testimony if you want t learn more about our oil imports, refineries, alternatives, and political events that are driving our oil prices upward, etc.

Canada is as close to the United States as any country can be – a stable and democratic friend and ally that shares a border and a language. We never need worry about Canada’s government being toppled in a military coup or about Canada launching hostilities against us.

Now our good neighbor to the north is offering to sell us more oil taken from oil sands in Western Canada that would benefit the American people by strengthening our economic and national security and by creating desperately needed jobs for American workers.

According to a study by the Canadian Energy Research Institute, more than 342,000 new U.S. jobs are likely to be created directly and indirectly between 2011 and 2015 because of Canadian oil sands development. In part this is because much of the money Americans send to Canada to buy oil is spent by Canadians on U.S. goods and services.

All that’s needed is U.S. State Department approval for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would act as a superhighway to bring oil from Alberta to our country, where it would be refined to benefit American families and businesses far into the future.

At a time when millions of Americans are concerned about unrest in the Middle East and North Africa threatening our future oil supplies and driving up the price of gasoline, it’s unbelievable that the Obama administration continues to ponder and ponder whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

A mountain of evidence shows the pipeline would be safe and serve America’s national interest. Yet opponents concoct objection after objection after objection – no matter how weak – in an effort to stop construction.

The Keystone XL pipeline is a win-win situation for Americans, Canadians, the environment and consumers and workers in both nations.

Oil from Canadian oil sands in Alberta is going to be used by someone. Canadians will not let it sit buried underground. The only question is whether the United States will utilize the oil for our benefit, or whether Canada winds up shipping the oil to China and other parts of Asia.

Every barrel of Canadian oil the United States gets is one less barrel we have to import from far less stable areas of the world that are much farther away.

It makes a lot more sense from both environmental and economic reasons to send Canadian oil to the United States through a pipeline than it does to ship more Canadian oil to Asia and more oil from the other side of the world to America. Why would anyone want to generate higher energy costs by this global movement of oil that would create detours thousands of miles long?

International crises can arise overnight. Just as a community doesn’t wait for a fire to break out before organizing a fire department, our nation shouldn’t wait for a disruption in supplies of oil, natural gas, fuels and petrochemicals before strengthening both our own U.S. production capacity and our ability to get more oil from our good neighbor Canada.

Lately, proponents of the TransCanada Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline have not been satisfied to urge its approval; they insist that approval must be given right away. Alberta Energy Minister Ron Liepert wishes President Obama would just “sign the bloody order,” and House Energy Committee Chairman Fred Upton has introduced a bill requiring a decision by November. Why the rush to run roughshod over legitimate concerns about water contamination, landowner rights, public safety and greenhouse gas emissions?

It isn’t because of a shortage of crude. There is no shortage, and besides, tar sands production in Alberta couldn’t ramp up quickly enough to fill the pipeline in the short term. It isn’t because the Administration has studied the project excessively. It has not even studied an alternative route to the environmentally sensitive Sand Hills in Nebraska. It isn’t because bitumen pipelines have a terrific safety record. In fact TransCanada’s sister pipeline, Keystone I, has already leaked 11 times in just a year of operation, and the Kalamazoo River is still recovering from a horrific tar sands oil spill from last summer. A report by the Pipeline Safety Trust shows that bitumen pipelines are more likely to leak and do more harm when they do leak than conventional oil pipelines.

Perhaps the reason for the sudden rush is that while until now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been inclined to approve the permit, proponents have started to realize that if she scrutinizes the project properly, she’ll change her mind. Or maybe there’s desperation to secure approval before the results are in from Senator Wyden’s request to the Federal Trade Commission to look into market manipulation by TransCanada.

Since this question was asked last summer, new information has emerged revealing that this project is not what its boosters claim.

We’ve learned that TransCanada’s testified to the Canadian National Energy Board that the pipeline is designed to raise crude prices in the Midwest states, which currently enjoy healthy supplies of Canadian heavy crude. According to petroleum economist Phil Verleger, this crude price rise will translate into higher gas and diesel prices, costing Midwest consumers and farmers $4 billion. Not only will the pipeline raise gas prices, but it will kill jobs, as businesses and consumers have less money for non-fuel expenditures. If this pipeline is approved, President Obama will be accused of raising gas prices and killing jobs. Chairman Upton, of all people, knows that.

The pipeline would also, for the first time, facilitate the export of Canadian tar sands oil from a US port. Phil Verleger has demonstrated how it will be in the interest of Valero and other Gulf refiners to export a portion of the Keystone XL crude to China. There is no guarantee that the Canadian crude so incessantly promoted as beneficial to American energy security will stay in America. From a supply security point of view, we’d be better off keeping tar sands oil landlocked.

When companies like Conoco or Valero say the pipeline will be good for energy security, what they really mean is it will be good for their supply of discounted heavy crude. It has nothing to do with real energy security for American citizens.

The federal government should have two main goals regarding oil. One is to create the conditions for reliable supplies at reasonable prices, with minimum harm to the environment. The other is to reduce demand as much as possible and break oil dependence as quickly as possible. The Keystone XL pipeline does not further either goal.

President Obama should greenlight the Keystone XL pipeline and allow TransCanada to get to work building this vital project now.

At a time when both President Obama and international energy leaders are urgently calling on oil producers to increase their oil output to help prevent a negative global economic event, the Keystone XL project is not only an innovative solution to our growing, national energy needs, but its construction will be a boon to our domestic economy.

The numbers for the project speak for themselves. The project will bring 700,000 barrels of oil from U.S. and Canadian fields to Gulf Coast refiners. In addition to lowering gas and diesel prices nationwide, the project will add 20,000 high-paying domestic manufacturing and construction jobs - delivering a much-needed $20 billion shot in the arm to the US economy.

This Spring we’ve seen ongoing uprisings in the Middle East. The Keystone XL pipeline would strengthen our national security by reducing our reliance on oil from volatile and politically unstable regions of the world. Once in operation the Keystone XL pipeline will reduce America’s dependence on oil from Venezuela and the Middle East by up to 40 percent.

On top of that, the Keystone XL Pipeline is engineered to be the safest pipeline project ever built in order to provide maximum protection for the environment.

Lower gas prices, new jobs, a stronger economy and increased energy security for the Unites States. Need we say more?

Canada is the United States’ leading source of oil imports. Its production of oil from oil sands is increasing and will continue to do so independent of what the U.S. State Department does in its review.

Without the Keystone XL Pipeline there is no economical way to get that oil to U.S. refineries, so it will go elsewhere. That’s no small loss, considering the pipeline will allow us to use Canadian crude deliver 1.1 million barrels of oil a day -- a serious dent in what's being imported from the Middle East and Venezuela.

The State Department originally intended to complete its review by early 2011. Now, it has pushed the deadline back to the end of the year. The delay appears to be another case of political pandering to environmental extremists. Yet, the alternatives present far greater ecological risks.

Canada is going to produce its oil sands whether or not we import its product. Without the pipeline, the country will export its crude to another nation, most likely China. Transporting oil by way of a pipeline results in lower emissions than transporting it by tanker.

Moreover, American refineries are more efficient than China’s. And our cars have the lowest emissions of any likely importing nation. Consequently, building the pipeline would deliver the best option in terms of global emissions.

Construction approval shouldn’t take an act of Congress, although that was necessary to expedite construction of the TransAlaska Pipeline. If President Obama’s latest embrace of increased domestic oil production is genuine, he will tell Secretary Clinton to stop slow walking the approval process.

The objective of the State Department review is to determine if the pipeline is “in the national interest.” With gas prices nearing $5 a gallon in some parts of the country, if the answer to that is not obvious, our problems with Washington’s bureaucracy are greater than anyone imagines.

Federal review of the pipeline proposal has been underway since 2008 -- the beginning of our worst recession in decades. This is a truly “shovel ready” project that would create jobs, invite private investment, and increase tax revenue.

The delay is simply another example of environmentalism run amok. From the Canadian side of the border, it must look incomprehensible and insulting. Our leaders bemoan imports from the most unstable regions in the world but dither over whether to replace them from a secure source and neighbor.

Objections by EPA are further proof that the agency is controlled by zealots who relegate economic interests to ideologies, especially off-oil ones. Arguments being used to delay construction are the same ones that were used to object to the TransAlaska Pipeline almost four decades ago. They proved bogus then and are just as bogus now.