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It took a while for Vincent DeVito, like many of those who’ve been working in opposition to new pipelines, to understand what you might call the Keystone effect. DeVito, a former assistant secretary in George W. Bush’s Energy Department, recently started representing Boston-based conservation land trusts opposed to a $4 billion proposal to pipe natural gas across New England. DeVito might never mention Keystone by name in his fight against the Northeast Energy Direct pipeline—which after all is a much different animal, providing a cleaner fuel than the heavy oil Keystone would supply—but he doesn’t need to.
DeVito appreciates how much Keystone has changed the game—the way in which the bitter, years-long fight over the famed Canadian oil pipeline has inspired and spread new opposition by landowners and environmentalists across the country, opponents who once operated locally but are now connecting up nationally, pooling resources and inserting themselves into numerous different fights at once. The veteran attorney can easily list the parallels between his New England gas pipeline and Keystone: opponents of both object to the environmental consequences of the fuel’s extraction, and both big-money pipelines are stalled by suspicions that the fuel will ultimately be exported, failing to benefit the communities that would bear the burden of construction. “Both are generating sophisticated debate, I’d say, from a public that’s taking more time to learn about approval processes and how they can participate,” DeVito said. By contrast, back when he was a Massachusetts energy regulator in the late 1990s, “all we’d get is information from the developer,” who usually had the upper hand, he said.
All that has changed. As Keystone’s problems imprint themselves on the nation’s political DNA, environmentalists and local advocacy groups are using the same template that has stalled it for six years to stoke resistance to fossil-fuel projects from coast to coast. Word is out in the oil and gas industry that NIMBY is the new normal. From fuel-starved New England to the refinery country of California, the legacy of the pipeline fight has become an organized and galvanized local resistance to new energy infrastructure. Recent example: Elizabeth Warren came out against the New England pipeline DeVito is fighting way back in August, delighting activists in her home state. The next target of anti-pipeline forces: Hillary Clinton, whom they still remember for musing in 2010 that her State Department was “likely” to approve Keystone.
Perhaps the best illustration of the Keystone effect is the briefings that Bold Nebraska, a nonprofit leading the charge against the famous pipeline, has given in other states where heavy oil transportation projects are prompting fresh resistance campaigns. “Cynics told us Keystone XL would be a distraction from other key fights – instead it’s been an inspiration and training ground for activists across North America,” said Jamie Henn, who co-founded the anti-Keystone climate activist group 350.org with protest leader Bill McKibben. “From Montreal to Minnesota, volunteers are hard at work blocking proposed pipelines.”
On the record, petroleum industry advocates belittle the opposition and wax confident. “Yeah, there is increased local opposition in many areas right now” as activist groups use new funding to fight other projects, says American Petroleum Institute senior manager Cindy Schild. “Is this going to trigger the end of pipelines? I certainly hope not.” But privately both the energy industry and its allies in government on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border are clearly worried. One source close to the Canadian oil industry described to me an atmosphere of “extreme caution within governments” about major pipeline proposals. “Regulators are not set up to do this,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “They’re not set up for this kind of militancy and challenge on political questions such as how fast we change the energy economy.”
That adds up to more Keystone-style pain for pipeline companies, the source added: “The problem is even greater than they perceive. They’ve got their hands full, but the problem is even worse than they imagine.”
How so? In part because even now the industry is reluctant to take the opposition seriously. TransCanada and other Keystone boosters portray their critics as extreme fringe elements, pointing to polls that show most Americans favor building the pipeline. But that radical resistance has so far succeeded in forcing a reroute of Keystone and DeVito’s New England natural gas pipeline, not to mention delays in multiple other pipeline projects, large and small.
All of which raises a question: Could Keystone – even if it overcomes President Obama’s opposition and gets approved – be the last big pipeline built in America?
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Clearly what’s already over is the era of easy pipelines. Left-wing activist and author Naomi Klein has christened the growing grassroots campaign Blockadia, and the executive vice president at Keystone sponsor TransCanada, Alex Pourbaix, warns it’s part of “an extraordinarily radical agenda” that sends emissaries into pipeline-affected areas to “lie and exaggerate.”
But in truth, the industry’s problems are sometimes bipartisan. After Warren and fellow Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey came out against the first route for the Northeast Energy Direct gas line months ago, that project’s backer, Kinder Morgan, proposed re-routing some mileage north into New Hampshire – just as TransCanada years ago redrew its Keystone map to counter Nebraska opponents.
New Hampshire’s Republican senator, Kelly Ayotte, joined Democrats in October to alert regulators of the project’s “potential impact on sensitive conservation areas and public safety,” reflecting “deep concerns” in some areas the pipeline would cross.
“Projects that are overly creative are going to run into stumbling blocks or significant obstacles,” said DeVito, now a partner at the Boston-based firm Bowditch & Dewey. “People out there are not necessarily anti-pipeline and anti-fracking, but are primarily for responsible siting.”
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is not used to extract the oil that Keystone would pipe. But just as greens have tugged the F-word into the popular lexicon, blasting fracking so relentlessly that New York’s Democratic governor banned the oil and gas production technique last month, so have they weighed down Keystone’s Canadian oil sands with political risks—in the process turning President Obama into their champion. “It’s very good for Canadian oil companies,” Obama said of Keystone last month. “But it’s not going to be a huge benefit for U.S. consumers.”
Fossil-fuel makers and movers cringe at statements like that. Because oil prices are set on a global market, they say, Canadian fuel adds new supply that Americans can use to cut imports from the Middle East. But as Pourbaix of TransCanada acknowledged, the fall of oil and gasoline prices have sapped momentum for that pro-pipeline argument.
“The debate about access to oil seems to be a little more nearer to people when the price is four bucks a gallon,” he said.
Natural gas is a different story. Its environmental value as an alternative to coal is embraced by Obama himself and its price swings are less emblazoned in the public psyche than oil’s. Yet the industry’s push to export massive amounts of fracked U.S. gas and public fears about fracking have exposed gas pipelines like Northeast Energy Direct to the same attack used so deftly against Keystone.