Good For Canada And Us

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

Energy: Environmentalists are making a last stand against the Keystone XL pipeline with a scare campaign about groundwater. Time to review the facts and let the project proceed.

The Obama administration gets a lot wrong, but it does seem to be getting more clear-headed about oil.

This week, it announced it was moving ahead with oil leases that open a sizable swath of the Arctic Ocean to drilling. And it may soon give the green light to TransCanada Corp.'s Keystone XL, a 1,700-mile, $7 billion pipeline that would bring oil from the tar sands of Alberta to refineries in Texas.

If it does so, it will deeply disappoint the green lobby, which sees Keystone XL as a giant step backward. The Natural Resources Defense Council has warned that Keystone XL "undermines the United States commitment to a clean energy future."

But that future is far more distant than the NRDC wants to admit. One clue: This year's sales of the most popular electric car in America, the Nissan Leaf, totaled all of 7,199 through September.

Compare that with the Ford F-Series (416,388), Chevy Silverado (296,438) and Toyota Camry (229,521) and you can see that the car of the future has some way to go before it supplants the fossil fuel-powered cars and trucks of the present.

In the meantime, America will run mainly on oil. Neither the NRDC nor anyone else has figured out how to meet our energy needs without more of it.

Keystone XL already has a favorable environmental review from the State Department (which is involved because the project crosses U.S. boundaries). State now needs to determine if the project is in the "national interest."