TransCanada will move its $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline away from Nebraska’s ecologically sensitive Sand-hills region. Chief executive Russ Girling has said changing the pipeline’s route would “seriously jeopardize” the project.
“They’re willing to go through a process that sites it out of the Nebraska Sandhills,” Sen. Mike Flood, speaker of the legislature, said during legislative debate Monday. “This is a voluntary decision on their part, and it is a major development on this issue.”
The State Department, which intended to decide on the project by the end of this year, announced Nov. 10 it was delaying its decision by at least a year to consider new routes. It has jurisdiction over the project because the pipeline crosses an international border.
The original route was opposed by Nebraska politicians, landowners and environmentalists because they feared a leak on the pipeline would foul the huge Ogallala aquifer.
The 1,661-mile Keystone XL would run from Canada’s oil sands across six states to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. Bloomberg News
