Alberta officials won’t lobby Obama on Keystone pipeline

Government officials in Alberta, Canada won’t push President Obama to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline, saying they’ll focus instead on securing permits for other projects.

The province’s energy minister told CBC News on Thursday that the government’s goal now is to move forward on other pipeline projects, such as those delivering oil east and west through Canada rather than across the U.S. border, like Keystone. 

{mosads}”We’re going with the ones that are probably going to have the most success soonest,” Energy Minister Marg McCuaig-Boyd said. “Energy East has some promise and so does Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain. Those are the two right now to put our energies into.”

Keystone would carry oil from Alberta’s tar sands region to the Gulf of Mexico through the United States. American approval of the pipeline is long delayed, and the State Department is currently considering the project ahead of an up-or-down decision from the Obama administration. 

The project has become a touchstone topic for environmentalists, and a decision on the pipeline is a long-simmering political issue. McCuaig-Boyd said the fight is too politicized for her government to bother wading into.

“I think with the election coming and a few others things, it’s in their hands more than ours,” she said.  

In May, Alberta voters elected a left-wing government whose premier, Rachel Notley, said she would focus on environmental issues more than past officials did. 

Alberta’s former premier, Jim Prentice, had pushed both the Canada government and the Obama administration on Keystone, but Notley promised during her campaign to stop lobbying on the issue.