{"id":7612,"date":"2012-03-22T12:30:09","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T17:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=7612"},"modified":"2012-03-22T16:26:48","modified_gmt":"2012-03-22T21:26:48","slug":"obama-promotes-keystone-xl-pipeline-in-oklahoma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/03\/22\/obama-promotes-keystone-xl-pipeline-in-oklahoma\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Pushes for Southern Leg of Keystone XL Pipeline to Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Tom Pennington\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

President Obama is visiting Cushing, Oklahoma today as part of a multi-day tour promoting his energy prices in the midst of high gas prices and Republican criticism. Cushing is an interesting stop for the President because it’s a major oil hub and it’s where the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline<\/a> will begin.<\/p>\n

That pipeline would take heavy crude harvested from oil sands in Alberta, Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas. The President had denied a permit last year for the entire pipeline – part of which went through sensitive aquifer areas of Nebraska. The company behind the pipeline, TransCanada, recently announced that it intended to go ahead and build the Oklahoma-to-Texas leg<\/a>, which wouldn’t require approval by the State Department. (For a more thorough explainer and background, read our topic page on the Keystone XL pipeline<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Based on his remarks, Obama is in favor of that plan. Noting that there’s a bottleneck in Cushing of oil<\/a>, coming in from places like the oil sands of Alberta and the Bakken Shale in North Dakota, the President said that he’s\u00a0“directing my administration to cut through the red tape, break through the bureaucratic hurdles, and make this project a priority, to go ahead and get it done.”<\/p>\n

More from his remarks and some reactions from others:<\/p>\n

“So the southern leg of it we’re making a priority, and we’re going to go ahead and get that done. The northern portion of it we’re going to have to review properly to make sure that the health and safety of the American people are protected.\u00a0 That\u2019s common sense.<\/p>\n

But the fact is that my administration has approved dozens of new oil and gas pipelines over the last three years -\u2013 including one from Canada.\u00a0 And as long as I\u2019m President, we\u2019re going to keep on encouraging oil development and infrastructure and we\u2019re going to do it in a way that protects the health and safety of the American people.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have to choose between one or the other, we can do both.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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