Monday, April 2, 2012

The Republican pipeline and gas price lies


If you haven’t heard these claims yet from your Republican friends and conservative radio talk show fans, you probably will hear them soon. 

They will tell you that gas prices are going up because the evil Obama “blocked” the Keystone XL pipeline that could have pumped 700,000 barrels of oil each day into the U.S. thus allowing us to once again have cheap gas AND that even worse Obama is preventing oil companies from exploring for oil in Alaska.

NONE of this is true.  Here is the truth from FactCheck.org.

There’s nothing stopping more Canadian oil from coming into the U.S. right now. Existing cross-border pipelines could carry perhaps 1 million additional barrels of oil per day, and surplus capacity is projected to persist for years to come even without the Keystone project.

Furthermore, Obama hasn’t “blocked” it. The Keystone’s sponsor says it expects the White House to approve the northern leg, from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Nebraska, in 2013, after it submits an application for a new route around Nebraska’s environmentally sensitive Sandhills region. Meanwhile, it is going ahead with the southern portion, which Obama has endorsed, ordering agencies to expedite permitting.

As for the claim that Obama “opposed exploring for energy in Alaska.” The truth is that Shell Oil days ago said it expects to begin drilling exploratory wells this summer in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas off Alaska’s Arctic coast, now that the Interior Department has granted approvals for the company’s oil spill response plans.


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