EPA's Gina McCarthy’s Harsh Words for Keystone XL

Pub­licly, EPA Ad­min­is­trat­or Gina Mc­Carthy played her cards close to the vest on the Key­stone XL oil-sands pipeline, of­fer­ing largely non­com­mit­tal re­marks when asked about Key­stone dur­ing the long State De­part­ment re­view.

But a let­ter made pub­lic Fri­day along­side Pres­id­ent Obama’sre­jec­tion of the pro­ject shows Mc­Carthy tak­ing a harder line, even if she stops just short of overtly re­com­mend­ing that the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion block the pipeline from be­ing built.

In the Feb. 2 let­ter, Mc­Carthy told the State De­part­ment that ap­prov­ing Key­stone risked un­der­min­ing Obama’s work on cli­mate change.

“The cli­mate im­pacts of the de­cision—both the in­vest­ment it rep­res­ents in a high car­bon in­tens­ity en­ergy source and the po­ten­tial that the pipeline could res­ult in large in­creases in green­house gas emis­sions—and the mes­sage that ap­prov­ing it would send at a crit­ic­al mo­ment for in­ter­na­tion­al ac­tion on cli­mate change, are at the heart of this coun­try’s na­tion­al in­terest,” she told Sec­ret­ary of State John Kerry.

The let­ter is part of the in­ter­agency com­ments pos­ted pub­licly on­line Fri­day that vari­ous de­part­ments provided to the State De­part­ment early this year to State’s de­cision-mak­ing on Key­stone.

The EPA let­ter is sym­path­et­ic to a cent­ral ar­gu­ment that en­vir­on­ment­al­ists made against Key­stone. Green groups long ar­gued that Key­stone would boost green­house-gas emis­sions by en­abling a sub­stan­tially big­ger growth in pro­duc­tion of car­bon-in­tens­ive Ca­na­dian oil sands.

“Giv­en the po­ten­tial im­ped­i­ments to oil sands growth that sus­tained lower oil price and con­strained pipeline scen­ari­os could present, the de­cision to per­mit the Key­stone XL pipeline could in­crease oil sands de­vel­op­ment over what would oth­er­wise oc­cur, and thereby res­ult in sig­ni­fic­ant in­creases in green­house gas emis­sions,” Mc­Carthy wrote.

The State De­part­ment didn’t quite ac­cept that lo­gic in its fi­nal de­cision against the pipeline, but noted un­cer­tain­ties about the ques­tion en route to con­clud­ing that build­ing Key­stone is a bad idea.

From the fi­nal writ­ten de­cision: “While the pro­posed Pro­ject by it­self is un­likely to sig­ni­fic­antly im­pact the level of GHG-in­tens­ive ex­trac­tion of oil sands crude or the con­tin­ued de­mand for heavy crude oil at re­finer­ies in the United States, it is crit­ic­al for the United States to pri­or­it­ize ac­tions that are not per­ceived as en­abling fur­ther GHG emis­sions glob­ally. Ir­re­spect­ive of the un­cer­tainty high­lighted above, an ap­prov­al of the pro­posed Pro­ject would fa­cil­it­ate trans­port­a­tion in­to our coun­try of a highly car­bon in­tens­ive en­ergy source.”

Mc­Carthy’s let­ter is tough­er on Key­stone than her pub­lic com­ments (like these) while the State De­part­ment and the White House were still weigh­ing the pro­ject.

But it’s not the only ex­ample of EPA seek­ing to in­flu­ence the pro­ject. In a sep­ar­ate early Feb­ru­ary let­ter about State’s en­vir­on­ment­al ana­lys­is that was made pub­lic at the time, EPA urged State to re­vis­it its largely be­nign ana­lys­is of the green­house-gas im­pacts of build­ing Key­stone in light of the col­lapse in oil prices.

EPA is among the sev­en Cab­in­et-level agen­cies that provided the State De­part­ment with com­ments about wheth­er per­mit­ting Key­stone XL would be in the coun­try’s “na­tion­al in­terest.”

Oth­er fed­er­al agen­cies’ com­ments were less poin­ted, al­though the In­teri­or De­part­ment provided State with let­ters of op­pos­i­tion from a num­ber of Nat­ive Amer­ic­an tribes.

The En­ergy De­part­ment offered de­tailed in­form­a­tion and ana­lyses of oil mar­kets, the im­pact of crude-oil-price re­duc­tions on the oil-sands sec­tor, and more, but does not make any re­com­mend­a­tions.

The Com­merce De­part­ment was very brief, not­ing only, “The De­part­ment of Com­merce has no com­ments/views.” The De­fense De­part­ment said it would have “no ob­jec­tion” to a per­mit for Tran­sCanada, and so did the Home­land Se­cur­ity De­part­ment.