Keystone Foes Use Narrow Win in U.S. Senate to Prepare for 2015

Environmental foes of the Keystone XL pipeline are using their narrow victory in the U.S. Senate this week to raise funds for the next showdown on the project. “Make an emergency gift to the Sierra Club right now,” Sierra Club head Michael Brune said in a pitch after the Senate fell one vote short of the 60 needed to pass a bill backing the pipeline. “We’ve worked so hard to stop the pipeline for a long time now. But we have to keep fighting.” The League of Conservation Voters, which lobbies for environmental causes, sent out emergency alerts to its 40,000 members nationwide, urging them to contact their senator to offer thanks, or criticism, for their vote. “We expect to see even more attacks on the environment when the new Congress comes into session in January,” according to the LCV e-mail. “Our democracy works when lawmakers know that we’re paying attention.”Since TransCanada Corp. (TRP), a Calgary-based pipeline maker, applied to build Keystone in September 2008, it has become a proxy in broader political debates over jobs, U.S. energy security and climate change. Keystone XL would have the capacity to carry 830,000 barrels of oil a day, linking Alberta’s oil sands to refineries along the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coast...more