As the new GOP Congress scrambles to pass legislation approving the Keystone XL pipeline, President Obama has increasingly signaled a negative view of the controversial project.
Recent weeks have seen some of the most negative comments from Obama on Keystone — not just about supporters’ attempts to bypass him, but on the merits of pipeline itself.
It’s a shift for Obama, away from more neutral previous statements that have for years left his leanings unknown. And it’s giving environmentalists more hope than ever that Obama will reject the pipeline.
One of the president’s most forceful statements about the pipeline came the week before Christmas, when he declared that Keystone would provide little, if any, benefit to the United States.
“It’s very good for Canadian oil companies, and it’s good for the Canadian oil industry but it’s not going to be a huge benefit to U.S. consumers, it’s not even going to be a nominal benefit to U.S. consumers,” he told reporters.
About a month earlier, Obama said during a trip to Asia that Keystone “is providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land down to the gulf, where it will be sold to everyone else. It doesn’t have an impact on U.S. gas prices.”
The president has only reached this opinion about the Canada-to-Texas pipeline after a years-long roller coast of statements and indications from him and his administration.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/229094-obamas-keystone-shift
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