State Department Concludes Minimal Impact for Keystone Pipe

Report: Keystone pipeline would have minimal environmental impact

A long-delayed environmental report from the U.S. State Department could remove a major hurdle for a controversial oil pipeline from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast.

By Michael O'Brien, NBC News

A new State Department report on the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline finds that the project would have a minimal impact on the environment, an assessment likely to increase pressure on the White House to approve it. But the report sets no deadline for doing so.
Given this evaluation of environmental impact, President Barack Obama and his administration will face increased pressure to approve the project, which enjoys widespread support among Republicans, and some measure of support among Democrats and allies of the administration, like labor unions.

The proposed pipeline would carry crude derived from oil sands in Canada to refineries in the United States.

... See complete article at the link.

The complete US State Department report is at findings by the new State Department report. The report is in 11 "Volumes," each divided into multiple subsections, so a complete report requires saving (right click - save target as) 94 separate PDF documents, assuming I counted them correctly. (Numbers larger than Π/2 sometimes confuse me.)

The downloads are at least numbered consecutively from 221137.pdf through 221252.pdf, but with some numbers missing, suggesting that sections disagreeing with the conclusion they were told to get were omitted - as usual.

An additional puzzle is why the "map" of the pipeline on the cover sheet for each volume shows the pipeline ending at the south border of Nebraska, leaving another three states it must cross to reach the refineries on the Texas coast. Maybe Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas were omitted from the impact analysis.

Since the entire report is only 7,156 pages, I'm sure all our Congressional representatives read it all before commenting, although their lips must be really tired by now and they may not be able to talk (or shouldn't) for a while.

John