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Clinton under Senate scrutiny over oil sands

To recap, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, recently said that she was “inclined to” approve TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would stretch from Alberta as far as Texas.

Now a group of Senate heavyweights, led by Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, are raising concerns about the pipelines and Clinton’s prejudging of the approval process. Several of the 11 senators are members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The have sent a detailed letter with a laundry list of pointed questions about the pipeline.  One of them calls Canada’s bluff:

“The DEIS states that ‘producers in Canada have indicated that if the US market is not available to them, much of the crude would be shipped outside of North America. particularly to Japan, China and India…”

– What is the current status of the pipeline proposals to the West Coast?

– What is the capacity of these pipeline porposals relative to the capacity of pipelines to the U.S., with and without Keystone XL?

Etc.

It will be interesting to see the response from State.

The full letter is here.

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