Keystone XL Oil Pipeline: Today's Most Explosive Environmental Debate - The Atlantic

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Even if you don't pay a whole lot of attention to the fine points of U.S. energy policy, there's a good chance you've heard about the Keystone XL pipeline by now. The proposed 1,661-mile pipeline would transport crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta Canada down to Texas' Gulf Coast refineries. And stopping its construction has become the cause célèbre of the global environmental movement from the Dalai Lama to Robert Redford. This weekend, a group of environmentalists will attempt to form a human ring around the White House in hopes of swaying President Obama, who has said he will make the final call on whether to greenlight construction. Canada is already America's top supplier of oil. But the province of Alberta has just begun to emerge as a major force in the world energy market thanks to its abundance of petroleum-rich tar sands. Canada has known about the stuff for centuries, but the difficult and expensive process of refining it into fuel made mining the material economically unfeasible.

Keystone XL Oil Pipeline: Today's Most Explosive Environmental Debate - The Atlantic