Oil pipeline opponents plan to put Obama on the spot
Hundreds of former supporters of President Obama plan to protest outside a fundraiser today to pressure the president to reject a planned oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
With little time left to persuade the federal government to nix TransCanada's Keystone XL tar sands pipeline -- which has been in the works for three years -- activists are ratcheting up their message, attempting to make it a campaign issue for the president.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in Nebraska opposed to the project are making a last-ditch effort to find a legal way to mitigate the pipeline's potential risks.
The 1,700-mile underground oil pipeline would link the tar sands fields of northern Alberta to oil refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast. The State Department has jurisdiction over the $7 billion project, since it crosses U.S. borders, and is expected to decide on whether to approve it by the end of the year.
Opponents of the pipeline say more than 500 people who supported Mr. Obama in 2008 will protest outside the president's San Francisco fundraiser today, demanding that he fulfill his campaign promise to "the tyranny of oil."
"The Bay Area and Northern California were huge sources of grassroots donations and energy for the Obama campaign in 2008," said Elijah Zarlin, a 2008 Obama campaign organizer, who is now working with the group CREDO Action to organize today's protest. "If he wants these people back strongly for him in 2012, he needs to hear us on this, and seize this opportunity to lead."
Mr. Obama will deliver remarks at the W Hotel in San Francisco today at a $7,500-per-plate fundraiser. The president is traveling across the West Coast this week, in part for a series of fundraisers.
Opponents of the Keystone pipeline are also running an ad this week in the Washington Post and the New York Times calling the project a "crime in progress" that only the president can stop. They're also planning another protest outside of the White House on November 6 -- one year ahead of the 2012 elections. About 1,000 pipeline opponents were arrested outside of the White House in an August protest.
While federal authorities may be the only ones who could stop the project, lawmakers in Nebraska are searching for ways to at least alter it.
Nebraska's Republican Gov. Dave Heineman on Monday announced he's calling the state legislature into a special session next week to discuss ways to change the route of the pipeline "in a legal and constitutional manner."
"At the end of the day I want to be very, very clear: I believe we need to make the effort. I think Nebraskans will appreciate that," Heineman said, the Associated Press reports. "But it's entirely possible at the end of the day we'll have this conversation, and the Legislature may reach the conclusion that we don't have any legal or constitutional option."
Heineman told Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in August that he is opposed to the pipeline because its planned route lies directly over a critical aquifer. Other opponents of the project have called the pipeline "the largest carbon bomb in North America."
Proponents of the pipeline -- including both organized labor and the oil industry -- say it will increase America's domestic oil production with the help of a friendly ally and create 20,000 construction jobs in the process. They also point to a three-year State Department analysis that found no environmental threat from the project.
Still, environmentalists have been skeptical of the the State Department's environmental analyses. They point out that the State Department hired a consulting firm with financial ties to TransCanada to review the project -- something that three dozen Democrats in Congress have voiced concern about as well.
Opponents of the pipeline were further angered this week to find out that Mr. Obama's re-election campaign has hired a former lobbyist who worked for a company that represented TransCanada.
