TransCanada Corp. has offered a $100 million performance bond and other oil spill protection measures to Nebraska lawmakers in an attempt to appease opposition to the company's proposed $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline.

State lawmakers want to move the line away from Nebraska's Sandhills region, which is underlain by the Ogallala Aquifer, the source of most of the water for the U.S. agriculture region.

TransCanada executive Alex Pourbaix said it is too late to change the pipeline's path, although he said the Canadian company will offer other environmental protections, including a $100 million bond that the company would make available to the state in the event of a spill in the Sandhills region.

"I believe [the measures] should help alleviate any remaining concerns about the safety of the approved route of the pipeline," Pourbaix wrote in the letter to the speaker, Sen. Mike Flood.

TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard said the company has not yet received a response from the Legislature. The company decided to offer the concessions in light of a meeting with lawmakers last week, he said.

TransCanada has said the pipeline will be the most advanced and safest ever built. Supporters of the pipeline say it would provide the nation with cheap fuel, while opponents say it would present environmental hazards.

The U.S. State Department has said it will make a final decision on Keystone by the end of the year (Jeffrey Jones, Reuters, Oct. 18). -- PK