Clinton: Build Keystone Pipeline on Alternative Route

Former President Bill Clinton took a stand between Democrats and Republicans on the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline Wednesday. At an energy conference in Maryland, he said the pipeline should be constructed, but he blamed the system’s builder, TransCanada, for the fact that it hasn’t been built yet, Politico reports.

"One of the most amazing things to me about this Keystone pipeline deal is that they ever filed that route in the first place, since they could have gone around the Nebraska Sandhills and avoided most of the dangers, no matter how imagined, to the Ogallala [aquifer] with a different route,” Clinton said.

The alternative route likely will be utilized now, “because the extra cost of running is infinitesimal compared to the revenue that will be generated over a long period of time," he said, according to Politico. "So, I think we should embrace it and develop a stakeholder-driven system of high standards for doing the work."

Clinton said the recent increase in domestic oil and natural gas production is a mixed blessing, as it may lessen the focus on alternative, clean sources of energy.

"There are some hazards to the innovation project right now,” he said. "We have massive new recovery technologies in oil and gas, which could lead us down the primrose path of thinking [that] we don't have to keep using less energy and developing clean energy and technologies."