As public hearings on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline today stopped in the pivotal state of Nebraska, critics of the $7 billion Canada-to-U.S. oil link officially revealed plans for a second White House protest and the project's sponsor rolled out a new TV spot aimed at Cornhusker locals.

The flurry of action on Keystone XL kept many eyes in Washington, D.C., locked on Lincoln, where the State Department plans to hear testimony from landowners, consumers and others with a stake in the 1,700-plus-mile pipeline that has become a bright green pressure point for President Obama. The environmentalist coalition that led a recent White House sit-in against the XL line -- urging Obama to veto it as a symbol of climate change awareness -- today sought demonstrators to encircle the president's house on Nov. 6, one year before the 2012 election.

"We have less than 90 days to convince the president not to approve the pipeline," the conservationist protesters, including 350.org founder Bill McKibben and Tim DeChristopher, an activist serving a two-year jail sentence for placing false bids in a federal oil-and-gas lease auction, wrote in an open letter about their plans, first reported by Greenwire (Greenwire, Sept. 23).

"We've never tried something this ambitious before," the group added, and "we worry that it's too earnest and idealistic -- that maybe we should be going back to jail. But unlike last time, this time we're working from a position of strength, and we can firmly but peacefully remind the president that we were the real power behind his campaign."

Yet environmental groups that see stopping Keystone XL as a leap toward slowing development of the Canadian oil sands, which generate more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuel, are not alone in timing high-profile action to today's first Nebraska hearing.

The project's sponsor, Alberta-based TransCanada Corp., yesterday began running a series of TV spots in the state featuring a hydrogeologist who attempts to mitigate public concern over what a potential pipeline rupture could do to Nebraska's prized Ogallala Aquifer.

The Ogallala provides much of Cornhuskers' drinking and agricultural water, and advocacy groups pushing against the XL line have stoked safety worries by warning that an spill from the 700,000-barrel-per-day pipe could pollute massive amounts of water. In the ads, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, professor emeritus Jim Goeke urges locals to "recognize the science of the situation."

Goeke -- who was not paid by TransCanada to appear, according to the company -- adds in the first commercial: "There is a misconception that if the aquifer is contaminated, the entire water supply of Nebraska is going to be endangered, and that's absolutely false." A separate statement from the hydrogeologist added that any oil leak from the XL link "would be localized to an area of 10's or 100's of feet around the pipeline."

Paul behind hold?

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is the lone GOP senator still blocking a pipeline safety bill that Democrats have sought for weeks to clear through the upper chamber. That measure largely aligns with a bipartisan House Energy and Commerce Committee proposal that still must be merged with a competing, less strict pipeline bill before GOP leaders bring it to the floor.

Paul's office did not immediately return a request for comment on the pipeline bill, which faced objections from more than one Republican earlier this summer (E&E Daily, July 20). Anti-Keystone XL advocates, for their part, were quick to seize on the report that the conservative Kentuckian was holding up stronger pipeline safety rules out of an ideological resistance to new regulations.

"The tea party has to clean up the next oil spill," National Wildlife Federation Outreach Consultant Matt McGovern posted on Twitter in passing on the Paul report.

Click here to watch TransCanada's new Nebraska ad.