PA Groups: Pipeline Negates Clean Energy Investments
Monday, June 13, 2011
HARRISBURG, Pa. - Pennsylvania environmental groups have signed a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, urging her to reject a proposed pipeline that would carry tar sands from Canada to the United States.
Curtis Fisher, regional executive director of the National Wildlife Federation, calls it a case of big business exploiting nature for profit.
"The soil has a small amount of fossil fuel combined in it, and that's why they call it tar sand, and then they process that fuel. It's very toxic."
Although the pipeline won't pass through Pennsylvania, Fisher says, what goes on here day-to-day makes the Keystone State a major player in the fate of projects such as this.
"Pennsylvania is a critical state in terms of oil and gasoline consumed. We need a fuel source for transportation, and there's a big fight nationally and internationally over what that fuel source is going to be."
The pipeline company says the prpject would give the U.S. a reliable energy source and billions in economic benefits to the states through which it passes. However, in their letter to Clinton, the environmental groups strongly rebut those claims.
The pipeline would pose a major setback to the investments Pennsylvania has made in the past several years to support clean-energy projects, Fisher says.
"We have to move to other technologies, so that we can become self-reliant and create jobs and a strong economy here in this country."
The Keystone X-L project is a $13 billion, 1,600-mile pipeline running from Alberta through Montana, Nebraska and Oklahoma to end up in Texas. TransCanada, the company that wants to build it, needs Clinton's OK before construction can begin.
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