With the Keystone XL pipeline in an apparent holding pattern until 2013, green groups that ran a full-throttle campaign against it attempted today to debunk a key contention of its backers: that without Gulf Coast access for Canadian oil-sands crude, that fuel supply would end up benefiting Asian markets.

The specter of China seizing upon the oil-sands crude that Keystone XL would carry to the United States makes for a potent argument by congressional and industry backers of the $7 billion pipeline (Greenwire, Sept. 13). By hammering one major option for Canada to ship its fuel by tanker off its West Coast -- an Enbridge Energy Partners LP project called Northern Gateway -- environmentalists hope to capitalize on their success in forcing an Obama administration delay for the XL line while broadening the scope of their push-back against development of the bituminous oil sands.

"Even though the [Canadian] federal government may say, 'Oh, we'll just ship this bitumen west to Asia,' that's simply not the case," Nathan Lemphers, a senior oil-sands analyst at the Canada-based Pembina Institute, told reporters today.

Citing an environmentalist-funded poll that showed more than 80 percent of residents in British Columbia opposed to Northern Gateway, Lemphers predicted that resistance from First Nations indigenous peoples and others in the liberal-leaning province would ensure no easy Plan B if the Obama government nixes Keystone XL.

"There still will be opposition to these pipelines, in part because of the product that's flowing through" them, he said. "That's a climate liability that won't be going away if you simply put the pipeline in a different direction."

Pembina partnered with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Living Oceans Society on a report released today that catalogs green cases against the $5 billion-plus Northern Gateway, which would carry an estimated 525,000 barrels of oil-sands crude per day from Alberta to the British Columbia coast. Now under review by Canadian regulators as part of a process that mandates First Nations consultation, the pipeline could receive a final ruling as soon as 2012.

Enbridge touts its decades of experience in pipeline operation -- its average daily volume of oil transportation to the United States exceeds Mexico's -- in pitching its planned tanker transport of oil-sands fuel from British Columbia to Asia as a safe option.

The conservationists behind today's report counter that claim with many of the same arguments they used against Keystone XL, centered on the risk of a spill from Gateway and the resulting cleanup challenges as well as threats to wildlife and human health.

"It does really show the problems with the argument that if Keystone XL isn't built, then tar sands producers will just go west with their crude. There are environmental, technical and political barriers" to transporting oil-sands crude from Canada's West Coast in the event of Keystone XL's demise, NRDC International Program Attorney Anthony Swift said today.

Enbridge CEO Pat Daniel acknowledged to investors this month that "I wouldn't find it surprising" if Keystone XL foes took aim at Gateway, as well as a proposed Wrangler line that would build on existing rights of way to connect Oklahoma with Gulf Coast refineries.

Enbridge spokesman Paul Stanley said that the company would look at the greens' report, though he described it as "essentially a compilation of all the arguments we've heard from these groups over the last couple of years." The company sees those claims as appropriately addressed in its Canadian regulatory filings, Stanley added: "The case for Northern Gateway stands on its own. It's not dependent on any other project."

Keystone backers on Hill

As environmentalists expanded their fight against oil-sands crude generally, proponents of Keystone XL gathered on Capitol Hill today for a briefing sponsored by the conservative Heritage Foundation that touched on political strategy to keep the pipeline high on President Obama's radar heading into his re-election run.

"The president doesn't listen too well to Congress or pay much attention to it," Myron Ebell, director of the right-leaning group Freedom Action, said today of a House-passed bill aiming to force a quick White House decision on the XL line. Ebell urged lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee "to send another message to the president" through a second pro-pipeline bill when they meet on the issue on Friday (E&E Daily, Nov. 29).

One industry-aligned attendee at the briefing suggested that Keystone XL backers take a page from the green playbook and form a human circle around the White House in 2013, the latest deadline for a ruling on the pipeline -- a notion that Daniel Simmons, regulatory affairs director at the conservative Institute for Energy Research, deemed "interesting" and potentially worthy.

Click here to read a copy of today's environmentalist report on Northern Gateway.