Keystone Pipeline Route (image: TransCanada)

The Keystone XL pipeline will now either receive or be denied its construction permit by February 21, according to the schedule worked out in the two-month stopgap deal to extend the payroll tax, unemployment insurance and the doctor’s fix.

The State Department has said repeatedly that they would not be able to properly review Keystone XL within 60 days. This is especially true because the route has not been finalized. Earlier in the year, when Nebraska balked at building a pipeline in the Sand Hills region over a critical aquifer, TransCanada, the company in charge, agreed to change the pathway. But no route has emerged as a definitive solution to avoid the aquifer. Therefore, the bill forces the State Department to complete a review of a transcontinental pipeline that has no finalized blueprint.

Keep in mind that there’s substantial controversy about the initial environmental review from the State Department, which was run by a TransCanada contractor. The State Department’s Inspector General has opened an active investigation into this. To use any of that analysis in the final decision would invite more charges of corruption, one of the motivating factors for the Administration putting off the final approval in the first place. And not only has the State Department stated that the 60-day window would lead to a permit denial, but the White House has weighed in to back them up.

The real question, then, is whether this denial would end the production of dirty tar sands oil, and the shipment of that product to refineries and then around the world as fuel, increasing carbon emissions in the atmosphere. Here the question is less clear. The New York Times over the weekend wrote a story that could potentially be seen as influencing the State Department decision, claiming that the oil would be extracted at any rate.

State Department officials and industry analysts say there is nothing to prevent TransCanada, the company proposing to build Keystone, or a different pipeline operator, from submitting a new application to build a similar project […]

As eager as TransCanada is to build the new pipeline, there is sufficient pipeline capacity for now to carry current production of crude from the Alberta oil sands to American refineries. With relatively minor adjustments, there will be enough space on existing transborder pipelines to handle expected flow until 2018 or later, analysts said.

It is only after 2020, when production of Canadian crude is expected to double from today’s 1.5 million barrels a day, that the pipeline crunch becomes severe. Canadian companies are already planning to expand current pipelines and build new ones to carry oil to the coast of British Columbia for export to Asia.

But there’s some additional context needed here. First of all, a new application would lead to a new top-down review of the project, with public hearings and reports. That could take years. Second, if TransCanada or another pipeline operator could just re-route through British Columbia without a problem they would have done it already. In fact, the proposed pipeline to British Columbia pursued by Enbridge has been delayed for over a year.

Yes, the investment in extracting tar sands oil has been significant. Yes, just slowing down pipeline projects is not a sustainable solution. But it has succeeded over a period of years, and if by the end of the decade, environmentalists and scientists cannot convince the world of the need to deal with this urgent problem of climate change, it’s game over anyway. As Bill McKibben tells the NYT, “Stopping Keystone will buy time, and hopefully that time will be used for the planet to come to its senses around climate change.”

The Republicans appear to have given additional time to the planet, by forcing a quick decision on the Keystone XL permit, leaving no choice but denial. They wanted it as an electoral issue. There’s probably a wholly unintentional side benefit to the planet that must be exploited by the environmental community.