Oil-pipeline foes pin hopes on growing Neb. opposition

Associated Press

LINCOLN, Neb.

Environmentalists hoping to block a proposed underground oil pipeline that would snake 1,700 miles from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico have pinned their hopes on an unlikely ally: the conservative state of Nebraska.

Few states are as red as Nebraska, which hasn’t supported a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964. But opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline has risen steadily since the project was proposed three years ago.

The reason: fears of contaminating the Ogallala Aquifer, a vast subterranean reservoir that spans a large swath of the Great Plains and provides water to much of Nebraska as well as seven other states. Opponents have grown to include Nebraska’s conservative governor and two U.S. senators, a Republican and a conservative Democrat.

Many in the public are hostile to the idea, too. When a pipeline-company logo was displayed on a stadium screen during a recent Nebraska Cornhuskers game, boos rained down from the crowd of 85,000. The university agreed to stop running the ads.

Damon Moglen, a spokesman for the Washington-based environmental group Friends of the Earth, called Nebraska “the key battleground” over the proposal.

Both sides of the debate will have a final chance to make their case this week, when public hearings take place in Lincoln and Atkinson, a small town in northern Nebraska. Similar meetings are scheduled in other states that would be crossed by the pipeline.

“We’re in the fourth quarter of this game,” Moglen said. “The question is, can the home team up its game and win?”

In addition to approval from affected states, the international project needs backing from the State Department, which expects to decide the matter by the end of the year. Department leaders probably will attend some of the hearings.

“We see these as listening sessions,” said Kerri-Ann Jones, assistant secretary for the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, a State Department agency. “We want to listen and hear what people have to say.”

If built, the 16-inch steel pipe would carry oil extracted from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma to refineries in Texas.

Other states have mostly accepted a promise from the pipeline company Trans-Canada that the $7 billion proposal will create 20,000 jobs, mostly from construction, over two years and provide a reliable source of oil. But environmentalists and a growing number of Nebraskans are resisting.