It didn’t take long for the newly controlled Republican Congress and the Democratic executive branch to draw battle lines over the Keystone Pipeline. The plan concerns one potential method to expand the energy infrastructure in the United States and relates to a proposed expansion to the pipeline and add a track directly from Alberta province in Canada to Steele City, Nebraska. From there, it joins the existing pipelines that proceed down to Texas. The proposed goal is for the pipe to carry about 830,000 barrels of heavy crude oil from Canada to the United States.
The primary opposition to the passage of this bill comes from the executive. President Barack Obama has vetoed the bill, at which point it is struggling to muster the overriding majority (two-thirds) it would need. Obama has claimed that the pipeline would primarily benefit Canadian oil firms and is still reviewing the potential environmental concerns of climate change.
If the bill were to be passed, the United States would be able to more easily tap Canada’s vast reserves. As the first major piece of legislation from the Republican Congress, the bill represents a major watermark in both the political climate of interbranch relationships and also an important decision for the future of energy. While originally failing in the Senate, it recently passed with the addition of amendments that do not exempt oil sands from the tax to clean up oil spills. This means that not only could this bill signal the particular direction of how America uses energy (and the continued availability of oil for gas), but also how much fighting can be expected in the government. The fate of how the energy question is resolved will say a lot about whether or not other divisive but important issues such as tax reform or community college financing adjustments will go through.
The future of the nation’s energy materials and policy will be affected in either case of pass or fail. A veto from Obama has happened, so whether or not a revised bill can get through will be up to the whims of partisanism.
