EMISSIONS: Industry fights back on Keystone XL's climate impact

News
February 20, 2013

Posted by Christa Marshall

In the wake of environmental protests at the White House, supporters of the Keystone XL pipeline pushed back yesterday against the argument that the planned oil conduit from Canada would be a climate catastrophe.

Canada constitutes about 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, with the oil sands constituting a small percentage of that total, said Alex Pourbaix, TransCanada's president of oil pipelines and energy, at a briefing yesterday at the National Association of Manufacturers. Under "simple math," the oil sands represent far less than 1 percent of the global energy industry's contribution to greenhouse gases, he said.

"Even if production from the oil sands were to double, the [greenhouse gas] contribution from the oil sands would be immaterial" in comparison to global levels, Pourbaix said at the event with piping and welder specialists and representatives from the American Petroleum Institute and U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Read the full article at E&E News