Dallas+D.+-+EN+-+SP12

Dallas Diehl 3/22/12 "Obama defends keystone pipeline handling"

Summary: On thursday, President Barack Obama defended his decision to order the government to "fast-track" an Oklahomoa pipeline. He stated that law makers didn't give his administration enough time to look over the 1,170 mile long Pennsylvania pipeline and make sure that it was safe enough for citizens living around it. Then Obama said that congress decided that they weren't going to let Obama's administration make an informed decision and that they were just going to create their own timeline instead of letting the experts decide how long it should take to investigate. On thursday, Obama said " he was directing federal agencies to expedite a 485-mile line from Oklahoma to refineries on Texas' Gulf Coast that would remove a critical bottleneck in the country's oil transportation system.". He had also stated that " Anyone who says that we're somehow suppressing domestic oil production isn't paying attention". Once Obama said this, many republicans believed that it wasn't much more than a publicity stunt and that it wouldn't help TransCanada build the pipeline any sooner. Kristen Kukowski stated "The American people can't afford more half-measures on energy from the president. No matter what he says, the reality is he killed the Keystone pipeline and the energy production and 20,000 jobs that went with it". Many environmentalists were also against Obama's actions because they believe he just wanted to permit the pipeline as quickly as possible by reducing safety inspections.

Relevance: This article is relevant to the course because the keystone pipeline requires much hydrauloc fracturing. This is when bedrocki is fractured using water to release natural gas. This is considered to be even less environmentally friendly than drilling. But this wasn't the only "new" concept that wasn't environmentally friendly in the past 100 years. During the industrial revolution many factories were absolutly terrible for the environment and so were their waste products. This article also has to do with the topic because it talks about the use of a natural resource (Natural gas) and pollution which is also caused from the natural gas. 