Kerry rejects Keystone XL pipeline, spelling certain death for project

Pete Ricketts is criticizing President Barack Obama's decision to reject a permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

Obama says the economic benefits to the pipeline did not outweigh the environmental risks.

Heitkamp said it will be interesting to see the new prime minister's reaction.

Nebraska has played a key role in the debate over the project because of strong opposition from landowners and activists who tried to block the pipeline.

The $8 billion project's tombstone may be temporary, with the company behind it, TransCanada Corp., now weighing its options.

Now, however, the new Trudeau government, the Obama administration, and the next American administration will have the opportunity to create a more constructive dialogue about the fight against climate change and our shared energy infrastructure.

"And to watch this administration suck up to the radical environmental left by destroying the chance to have more affordable energy around the world, I just find disgusting and deeply at odds with America's best interests". "It would create well-paying jobs for skilled laborers, at no expense to the taxpayers, and in fact had already created hundreds of jobs in Arkansas, all the while helping get oil on the market from one of our closest allies". Between producing more oil here at home, and using less oil throughout our economy, we met that goal last year - five years early. "I think it's time we move past ideological disagreements and put folks to work building pipelines that will make our economy, environment, and country safer". Reaction to the announcement on both sides, was swift.

The project has become an environmental lightning rod in both Canada and the United States over energy security and the environmental impacts of carbon-intensive oilsands production.

Levi said environmentalists' claims were also exaggerated, and that they used the pipeline as an easy-to-understand symbol.

About 100,000 barrels a day of the oil that was supposed to move through Keystone XL would have come from North Dakota, where a boom in unconventional drilling has propelled it to become the No. 2 producing state in the USA behind Texas.

Chris Christie called it a "predictable" decisions from "a liberal environmentalist ideologue".

The complexity and expense of extracting oil from tar sands in Canada set off a discussion of environmental damage from the mining process itself.

"Today, we're continuing to lead by example", Obama said, announcing his decision to reject the project, "because ultimately, if we're gonna prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we're going to have to keep a few fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more unsafe pollution into the sky".