If you haven’t heard these claims yet from your Republican
friends and conservative radio talk show fans, you probably will hear them
soon.
They will tell you that gas prices are going up because the
evil Obama “blocked” the Keystone XL pipeline that could have pumped 700,000
barrels of oil each day into the U.S. thus allowing us to once again have cheap
gas AND that even worse Obama is preventing oil companies from exploring for
oil in Alaska.
NONE of this is true.
Here is the truth from FactCheck.org.
There’s nothing
stopping more Canadian oil from coming into the U.S. right now. Existing
cross-border pipelines could carry perhaps 1 million additional barrels of oil
per day, and surplus capacity is projected to persist for years to come even
without the Keystone project.
Furthermore, Obama
hasn’t “blocked” it. The Keystone’s sponsor says it expects the White House to
approve the northern leg, from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Nebraska, in
2013, after it submits an application for a new route around Nebraska’s
environmentally sensitive Sandhills region. Meanwhile, it is going ahead with
the southern portion, which Obama has endorsed, ordering agencies to expedite
permitting.
As for the claim that Obama
“opposed exploring for energy in Alaska.” The truth is that Shell Oil days ago
said it expects to begin drilling exploratory wells this summer in the Chukchi
and Beaufort Seas off Alaska’s Arctic coast, now that the Interior Department
has granted approvals for the company’s oil spill response plans.
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