Obama’s Keystone veto was a mistake

What a stroke of genius it would have been for President Obama to sign the Keystone XL pipeline bill!

It would have taken the wind out of the sails of the Republican right, whose corporate interests have been pushing the idea, and the Democratic left, which objects to the environmental damage accompanying the extraction of the oil that will flow through those pipes.

Think what could have been if the president had quoted the positive reviews the pipeline had gotten, if he had talked about how our continent is no longer dependent on foreign oil, if he had cited the comparative safety of pipelines to rail shipments, if he had pointed out that the connection to the pipeline already existed, if he had pointed out that the affected oil would be extracted anyway and maybe shipped abroad instead of being used domestically, and if he had made this good will gesture to Congress

And if he had said that despite some arguments whether Congress has a legal role in pushing Keystone, he was making this cooperative gesture.

It might have signaled that the president really wants to work with the GOP-controlled Congress and thus help this country pull out of the seemingly intractable deadlock it has been in for years.

All the arguments against the pipeline seem to me trumped by the continuing dangers of transporting crude by rail. We continue to have derailments with resulting fire, air and water pollution, and threats to life from exploding or fiery rail cars. Those potential disasters seem to occur even when tank cars that supposedly are the new and improved sturdier kind, and even when trains are moving well under prescribed speed limits.

In the latest mishap, a few weeks ago in southern West Virginia, CSX says the tankers had been built to the new specifications and the 109-car train was going 33 miles per hour in a 50-mph zone. Yet 19 cars derailed, several exploded spectacularly, one home was burned to the ground. Early fears that spilled oil polluted the water supply in an adjacent river proved to be unfounded.

The cleanup costs of such accidents are tremendous. The government of Canada wants the shippers and railways to bear more of those expenditures, the Wall Street Journal reports. The largest Canadian railroads already have to carry insurance of 1 billion Canadian dollars but the proposed new rules would levy a 1.65 Canadian dollar tax on each metric ton of crude shipped by rail to help pay cleanup costs. It’s estimated 700,000 barrels will be shipped by rail by next year, in part because there is insufficient pipeline capacity.

Delaware certainly has a vital interest in the matter since ever-increasing crude oil shipments are rolling into the PBF Energy refinery in Delaware City. The Keystone pipeline would probably not affect these shipments. Two environmental groups are fighting aspects of that refinery’s production.

Are pipelines safer than rail transport? There have been failures of pipelines in the United States, Canada and other countries, but certainly not in the numbers or disastrous effects of derailments, the worst of which in 1913 killed 47 people and destroyed the center of a Quebec community.

The 1,200-mile Keystone pipeline would carry crude oil through its 36-inch pipe from the oil fields of Alberta to link up with existing pipelines to carry the crude to Gulf of Mexico refineries.

But Obama did the expected, almost in secret, even though two veto excuses for the five-year-long dispute were gone: The State Department approved it after an extensive study, because the pipeline crossed the country line of Canada and a law suit in Nebraska by individuals who wanted to block the pipeline, was dismissed.

Once again Barack Obama has disappointed the people who want him to unite the country!

Harry Themal has written a News Journal editorial page column since 1989.