“That pipeline system does the very same thing the rest of TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline system also already does, even without the northern leg of Keystone XL rejected by Obama: brings dirty, carbon-intensive Alberta tar sands oil across the heartland of the U.S. and down to the U.S. Gulf coast. This probably explains why Enbridge was so confident as to announce it would be spending $5 billion to build holding facilities down in the Gulf, just two days before the White House’s Keystone XL decision.

“We also cannot forget that Energy Transfer Partners is currently pushing forward a pipeline proposal called Dakota Access LLC that would do what Keystone XL’s northern leg sets out to do, but on steroids. That is, bring hundreds of thousands (as opposed to 100,000) barrels per day of oil obtained via hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) in North Dakota’s Bakken Shale basin through the heartland and eventually down to the Gulf coast. Continental Resources CEO Harold Hamm, who a year ago called Keystone XL North ‘irrelevant‘ and who was the one who originally lobbied for Keystone XL North to have a Bakken ‘on-ramp,’ for now, is laughing all the way to the bank.”