Originally Posted by **********

Greetings!

Question: Why do Americans want the Keystone XL Pipeline so badly?

Today it is going up for a vote, and Obama says he will veto it. Pollution, Carbon, very dirty oil, Greenhouse gasses, danger to aquifer, bad bad bad, blah blah blah, to which I agree of course.

But forgetting pollution and dangers for a moment, the XL Pipeline would ship Canadian oil to Texas, not the other way around. The US would depend in part, on Canada for its energy needs. Why then would the US want this? If you're drilling and making your own oil and trying for energy independence, and since the pipeline would be potentially very dangerous, why would you want it?