The Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality has sent Governor Dave Heineman its 2,000-page draft evaluation of the proposed route through the state for TransCanada’s $7-billion dollar Keystone XL pipeline, but doesn’t make a recommendation on whether he should approve it.
Heineman has 30 days to review the massive report before making his decision, which will be shared with the U.S. State Department. The State Department, which has federal jurisdiction because the pipeline would cross an international border, will send its own recommendation to President Barack Obama, who has the final say.
The president rejected TransCanada’s initial application last January…in part because of environmental concerns over a proposed route that crossed part of the Nebraska Sandhills. The company then reached an agreement with Nebraska to reroute it around sensitive areas with the state to do the environmental review of the new route.
DEQ Director Mike Linder had been expected to include a recommendation on approval in the executive summary of the review, but agency spokesman Brian McManus says Linder and the DEQ felt their role was to “put together a thorough, objective report and present it to the governor with specific recommendations.”
One section did address the expected $278-million dollars in economic benefits from the project, including support for 2,740 new or existing jobs. McManus calls the section appropriate and valid because part of the agency’s mission was to evaluate the environmental and social impacts of the pipeline.
Both the executive summary and the full 2,000-plus page full draft report are available for public viewing online. The executive summary is available at pipeline.nebraska.gov while the report can be found on the Nebraska reroute website: https://ecmp.nebraska.gov/deq-seis/
The Keystone XL would bring oil from the tar sands of Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast. It’s been split into two parts: one from refineries in Oklahoma to the Texas coast, which is already moving forward, and the other from Canada to Oklahoma.
The northern section would cross 5 states…Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma…with TransCanada also looking at connecting it to the Bakken oil field in Montana and North Dakota.
Keystone XL would cross both Nebraska and South Dakota diagonally…South Dakota from near the tri-state corner with North Dakota and Montana to the Nebraska state line about midway between Wyoming and Iowa.
The Nebraska route would run from there to the southeast corner of the state where it would essentially join the route of the existing Keystone pipeline…which began operation two years ago.