OIL - Why Risk the Environments of 6 States?

This is the type of idea that makes me wonder just how insane Big Oil is.

QUESTION: If the this oil source is so important why not build a refinery near the source? It could be funded by a joint U.S./Canada venture. Why risk the environments of 6 states?

The answer is, of course, GREED.

"Tar Sands Pipeline Plan Renews Energy vs. Environment Debate" PBS Newshour 8/29/2011

Excerpt

JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): Next: a friendly and safe new source of oil for the U.S. or an environmental disaster waiting to happen?

The tar sands of Alberta, in western Canada, are today considered one of the largest oil reserves in the world, a source of crude petroleum known as bitumen. But the extraction of oil there has come with concerns about the environmental impact. And now those concerns have exploded with a plan by the Calgary-based company TransCanada to build a massive pipeline to carry that crude oil deep into the U.S.

The proposed Keystone X.L. pipeline would run 1,700 miles through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma on its way to refineries in Texas. It's projected to cost $7 billion and carry an estimated 800,000 barrels of oil a day. The plan has galvanized a growing opposition from those who fear it would increase greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the prospects of leaks and spills in environmentally sensitive areas.

Activists are now in the midst of a two-week protest at the White House. Some 400 have been arrested so far. On Friday, they were dealt a blow by the U.S. State Department, which released a report finding the pipeline project will present no significant environmental problems.

A final decision to allow or reject the pipeline will come from Secretary of State Clinton and ultimately President Obama. It's expected by the end of the year.

And we have our own debate on the Keystone pipeline project now with Robert Bryce, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of "Power Hungry: The Myths of 'Green' Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future," and Bill McKibben, an environmentalist, author and organizer of the ongoing protests in Washington this week.

By the way, who's going to actually fund the pipeline? You are, at the pump.

Another question that just occurred to me, "the U.S. State Department, which released a report finding the pipeline project will present no significant environmental problems," since when is the State Department the authority on environmental impact? I thought the EPA was.