The State Department should start from scratch and examine how approval of the Keystone XL pipeline project "might affect the threat of climate change," Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said in a letter today to Kerri-Ann Jones, assistant secretary of State for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs.

"I urge the Department to carefully evaluate the purpose of and need for the revised pipeline as well as the broader implications of this project for climate change," said Waxman, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "After several years of intense controversy over the proposed pipeline, including questions about the thoroughness of the State Department's process for evaluating the pipeline, the State Department now has a new opportunity to do it right."

The State Department is evaluating the environmental impacts of the revised route of TransCanada's highly contested 1,179-mile pipeline, which would transport Alberta oil sands bitumen through Nebraska. This supplemental environmental impact statement will help inform the government's decision on whether to grant TransCanada's application for a presidential permit, Waxman said.

He argued that State's final environmental impact statement for the initial Keystone XL route was flawed in numerous ways -- including its failure to consider climate change implications. The initial longer route included a southern part that ran from Oklahoma to Texas. The southern leg has been approved, and construction is under way.

Waxman suggested that State consider alternative oil sources as well as other ways of meeting transportation needs. He also pointed to the expansion of domestic shale production, developments in oil recovery techniques and efforts to build new domestic pipelines or expand existing ones.

He wrote that the most direct way to assess the current rerouted pipeline is to "develop a new environmental impact statement," as the "evaluation of purpose and need for the pipeline and the evaluation of alternatives to meet that need were not adequate in the final EIS and are now clearly inapplicable."

Citing a statistic from a Department of Energy study, Waxman wrote, "tar sands crude produces 17% higher greenhouse gas emissions over its lifecycle compared to the U.S. 2005 average fuel, while other studies have somewhat higher or lower estimates."