The State Department released the latest documents in one of the highest-profile and highest-stakes projects in the North American energy sector today.
The Draft Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement was released March 1, 2013, and includes extensive information on the project, which has attracted the ire of a wide swathe the environmental community and been treated by the oil and gas business as a litmus test of the Obama Administration’s commitment to securing energy supply and energy security through increased development.
The scale of the document speaks to the scale of the project and the stakes associated with it:
“In completing the draft Supplemental EIS, the Department took into consideration the comments contained in more than 400,000 e-mails, letters, and other communications submitted throughout the scoping process by public citizens, government agencies, Tribal governments, and interested nongovernmental organizations as well as over one million e-mails, letters, and other communications submitted to the Department during its consideration of the previous Keystone XL application,” State said.
The full document can be found here.
The Executive Summary of the document can be downloaded as a PDF here.
Final decision on the pipeline is down to the President, who customarily acts on the advice of his advisors at the agencies. State is involved because the Keystone pipeline crosses the border with Canada.