Please do not assume that I'm an anti-enviro, pro oil, faux news champion. I've been falsely accused of that here, and it’s tedious. For more than 30 years my academic and professional life has been informed by the conviction that climate change is the single biggest issue of our time, and I've watched with dismay as our generation has dawdled and dithered and done almost nothing about it. I've spent literally years of intense work on the issues of how to transition from our current path to something different. So, please: understand that I offer this in constructive light.
I'm not even remotely convinced that the SEIS is materially flawed. I think that the NEPA process has an internal logic that frames the wrong question. Attending to that has some implications for how we understand the struggle around KXL, and for what we demand of our elected leaders.
The EIS process for KXL looks at impacts by addressing the counterfactual: what happens if the project isn't built? The natural structure of the process doesn't ask "what SHOULD happen if KXL isn't built?". Instead, it asks "what IS LIKELY to happen if KXL isn't built?". If we on the left want to claim the mantle of actually being the reality based community we can't ignore the structure of the process that we have. And we cannot insist that the NEPA process should ask questions that the law isn't designed to address. (Hijack the process and use it to advantage? Sure, why not. Pretend the process is something different from what it is? Nah... I get off the bus there.)
Now, we have to ask ourselves (regardless of conflicts of interest by contractors, or whatever else): Do we believe that it is LIKELY that absent KXL the bitumen won't get to market on close (e.g., 5-15 years) to the same time span? Personally I find it barely credible. Rail DOES transport bitumen today, and that bitumen is being profitably produced. [Whether it SHOULD be transported by rail is a different matter; I actually think that it shouldn't, as rail is dangerous (especially compared to pipelines).] Indeed, there's been substantial increase in rail transport of bitumen.
What do comparative economics look like? The SEIS says that rail would increase transport costs by $7-$12/Bbl compared with KXL. Given today's prices oil sands production can certainly profitably shoulder that extra burden. Bitumen isn't on the margin of worldwide crude production costs. In Canada, at any rate, it’s inframarginal. (The story changes if we see prolonged prices around $70/Bbl, I’m pretty sure.) So, given normal political and market forces I have to conclude that it's likely that without KXL the bitumen gets to market, very minimally impeded.
But wait! What about Meteor Blades’ suggestion that because only 30,000 Bbls were transported by rail in 2013, as against 200,000 Bbls earlier predicted in the Draft SEIS? Doesn’t that indicate that really a lot of tar sands is actually on the margin and is not getting produced because of the absence of KXL? Well maybe. It might also be that producers are finding it more profitable to wait a bit to see how the uncertainty of KXL plays out. No need to commit yourself to less than optimal transport when you might enjoy cheaper transport later – especially if the cost of leaving it in the ground for an extra couple of years is pretty darn minimal. (Note that the story changes if KXL gets shot down.)
But wait! Don’t the assertions of oil industry CEOs that KXL is important to rapid expanded development of oil sands prove that that’s so? Um… not even close. Let’s see, CEOs that will benefit directly or indirectly from an energy project – where the total benefit to their companies will be in hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars – and you expect them to say “Keystone? Meh. No big deal”. Right.
If the question is about what is LIKELY to happen absent KXL, I think the burden is really on the anti-KXL folks to demonstrate (with real numbers, real analysis that addresses the economics and political dynamics of safety) that the crude won't get to market. I want to win as much as the next guy, but I don't think that these arguments are likely to carry the day. I just don’t think the arguments are very good, as a matter of economic and political analysis.
What I really think is that the SEIS isn't the problem, per se. The real problem is that the question invoked by the NEPA process isn't the right one. The right question is: What should we strive with all our might to achieve, however unlikely the odds, however great the departure from business as usual? We’ve sort of let Obama off the hook by accepting the notion that the NEPA process could help answer what to do on KXL. If he wants to help with climate change then he needs to be engaged to take steps to keep as much carbon in the ground as possible. Approving KXL isn’t consistent with that effort, but it’s reasonably consistent (probabilistically speaking) with “not increasing emissions”.
Preventing KXL is certainly part of that answer. And then stopping bitumen transport by rail. And mobilizing activists in Canada to prevent a new pipeline to BC. And for god's sake trying to stop tar sands development at the source as an insult and affront to the land. That's what we should strive to do.
But, to mangle Locke, let's not confuse what "ought" to happen from what "is" likely to happen. We should recognize that the odds are incredibly long. Success on KXL may well result in net environmental harm as the likelihood of railcar spills or newbuild pipeline to BC for marine transport increase. Lord knows that should KXL be stopped it's merely one finger in one leak in one dyke. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, with all our might, to make it so. But it’s not the case that KXL is a linch pin to victory on climate; it’s just one in a very, very long line of dominos we need to keep from falling over.