TransCanada CEO apparently has faith in our Liar-In-Chief

For reasons that are entirely unclear to me, the CEO of the Canadian company that still hopes to build the Keystone XL Pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico still believes that Emperor Barry will approve the cross-border pipeline, as opposed to doing something unpleasant in the TransCanada Corp. CEO's mouth:

TransCanada Corp. Chief Executive Officer Russ Girling said he is “very confident” the controversial Keystone XL pipeline will be approved by President Barack Obama.

Girling apparently believes that the guy who was awarded Politifact's Lie of the Year award for his claim that if you like your health plan, you can keep it -- shouldn't that have been the Lie of the Year for 2009 through 2013, and not just 2013? -- really means to approve the pipleline that he's been holding up for five years. The Keystone XL pipeline, which only needs State Department approval because it crosses the US-Canadian border, was on the verge of approval when Barry took office.

The decision was delayed because the issue, under scrutiny for about more than a year when Barry got to the White House, needed more study. That was five years ago. No study has found any problem with the pipeline -- most of which has already been built. The pipeline is supposed to go from Alberta, where Canada is drawing oil from its tar sands, to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico, by way of Cushing, Oklahoma. The Oklahoma-to-the-gulf portion is already in place and is about to start transporting oil.

It's important to note that the original Keystone pipeline -- which is why the current proposal is called "XL" -- has been in place for years and transports oil from Hardisty, Alberta to Patoka, Illinois. For some reason, that section is not controversial. The delay is do almost entirely to so-called environmental groups that claim the pipeline will add to "global warming" -- don't get me started -- by encouraging Canada to develop its tar sands.

I have bad news. Canada is going to develop that oil. They will sell it to us, and a pipeline makes that more convenient and cost-effective. If we won't build a pipeline, they will either sell it to us via another means of transportation, or they will build a pipeline to Vancouver and ship that stuff to China, who would love to buy it. The oil is coming out of the ground and getting sold, no matter what we do. The only folks who can be hurt here are the citizens of the US, who will pay more for a less-secure source of oil if there is no pipeline.

In the absence of the pipeline, TransCanada apparently is working on building a rail bridge to transport the oil to the U.S. Seriously, which do you think is a safer way to transport oil -- by rail car, or by pipeline? Seems easy to me, but a lot of that oil is already coming to the U.S. by rail. Seems to me that environmental groups actually concerned about the environment would favor a pipeline that would eliminate rail shipments to the U.S. and tanker shipments to China, both of which pose a greater risk to the environment than pipeline transport.

This all about so-called environmental groups that oppose fossile fuels at all times and in all instances for no logical reason, combined with the fact that these groups are major contributors to the Democratic Party. Barry acan't afford to piss them off, so he has put off an easy decision that would secure reliable energy and thousands of jobs for the U.S. simply because he doesn't want to cut off the flow of political donations from the Sierra Club and its ilk. Nice basis for policy.

Hat tip to Hot Air for getting me started on this.