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Keystone XL

Back in the pipeline

Congress has a fruitless fight over a modest proposal

ACCORDING to Joe Manchin, a Democratic senator from West Virginia, one advantage of the Keystone XL pipeline is that “wars could be prevented”. Barbara Boxer of California, also a Democrat, says that the pipeline would bring Shanghai-like smog to America—her point illustrated with a huge picture of Chinese people in facemasks.

So goes the hyperbole which surrounds the proposed pipeline, which is intended to link Canadian oilfields and tar sands with American refineries. On November 18th the Senate narrowly failed (59 votes to 41, 60 being required) to pass a bill that would have authorised its construction. The tight vote, with 14 Democrats joining all the Republicans to try to push it through, gave a hint of what may happen when the Republicans take over the Senate in January.

The Obama administration is not over-keen on the pipeline. The vote was mostly the work of Mary Landrieu, a centrist Democrat from Louisiana. She is fighting a run-off election for her seat against Bill Cassidy, a Republican congressman who sponsored the passage of the same legislation through the House. Oil is a big industry in Louisiana, and the president is deeply unpopular there: Ms Landrieu hoped the vote on her bill would help to prove her independence and “clout”. Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, apparently allowed the vote to bolster her campaign.

Keystone XL makes environmentalists livid: many of them protested, inflating an enormous black plastic pipeline on Ms Landrieu's lawn in Washington. Oil extracted from Canada's tar sands produces about 17% more carbon dioxide than conventionally-pumped supplies do—largely thanks to the energy needed to get it out of the ground. The process uproots forests and leaves toxic lakes behind. A pipeline carrying Canadian oil to Gulf coast refineries would lower the cost of getting such oil to market, so it might encourage energy firms to extract more.

Supporters point to the jobs that the scheme will create: some 42,000, according to estimates by the State Department (Ms Landrieu rounded this figure up to “millions” in the Senate debate). Some also suggest the pipeline will reduce America's dependence on oil from the Middle East and lower petrol prices for Americans in the states where the oil will be refined. A few, such as Mr Cassidy, deny that global warming is a problem at all.

Yet the curious reality is that few experts think the pipeline is all that important, either way. Canadian oil is already getting to market, points out Charles Ebinger of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank—just mostly by barge and train. A new pipeline would ease the strain on Canada's railways and increase the profitability of extracting the oil. But compared with swings in global oil prices, the effect will be small. Nor will many jobs be created. Most of those 42,000 are temporary posts; just 35 full-time permanent employees will be needed to run the pipeline.

Oddly, the project may not matter much in Louisiana. If completed, Keystone XL will deliver oil to Texas, not its neighbour. Some voters do still care, reckons Pearson Cross of the University of Louisiana, but they are unlikely to switch allegiance as a result of an ineffective vote in Congress. “The only way this could change anything around ultimately is if this got to Obama's desk and he signed it,” says Mr Cross. Even then, he reckons, the effect would be slight

Mr Obama may well end up signing a bill authorising the project. Just not yet. Allowing the pipeline to be built now would not just upset the president's few remaining fans, especially when he is trying to cheer them up with immigration reform (see Lexington); it would also throw away a bargaining chip that could be useful in the future. When Republicans take control of the Senate, Mr Obama will want as many of those available as possible.