BILLINGS, Mont. — The White House plan to seek alternate routes for a Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline presents a tangle of new problems for the project’s backers, and any of those obstacles could still sink the proposal before the first spade of dirt is turned.
Shifting the path to avoid a major aquifer could increase the number of perilous stream crossings and put the line closer to populated areas. Major changes also risk alienating pipeline supporters, who tout the economic benefits of creating thousands of jobs. And the most vocal opponents plan to keep up their fight regardless of the route.
The obstacles are tall enough, some observers say, that Canada’s oil- sands industry could even decide to bypass U.S. markets altogether and sell fuel directly to China using a pipeline through western Canada to the shores of the Pacific.
TransCanada’s $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline would carry up to 700,000 barrels of crude a day from Alberta’s tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries. The original route crossed six states, including Nebraska, where opponents worried about threats to the massive Ogallala aquifer. The line also would pass through Montana, South Dakota, Kansas and Oklahoma.
Largely because of complaints from Nebraska, the State Department agreed Thursday to look for new routes that would steer clear of the state’s Sandhills region and the aquifer, which flows beneath eight states and provides irrigation to huge farming areas. That effort will delay a final decision until early 2013.
