We think he did.
Politico reports:
White House spokesman Jay Carney says that immediately approving the Keystone XL pipeline isn’t happening. “Calls to approve Keystone XL right away are insulting to the American people … there is no pipeline application to review … the decision that the president made in January … was made without prejudice on the merits of the project. That’s how we view Keystone,” Carney said during his press briefing Wednesday. “Anybody out there who is telling his or her constituents that approval of Keystone” will lower gas “is blowing a lot of smoke,” he added.
But earlier today, Politico reported:
Bill Clinton says it’s time to build the Keystone XL pipeline.
Speaking at an Energy Department conference in Maryland on Wednesday, the former president said he was surprised the project has gotten as gummed up as it has, laying the blame on pipeline builder TransCanada.
“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’ve gone around the Nebraska Sandhills and avoided most of the dangers, no matter how imagined, to the Ogallala [aquifer] with a different route, which I presume we’ll get 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.
“So, I think we should embrace it and develop a stakeholder-driven system of high standards for doing the work,” Clinton added… [Emphasis added]
So TransCanada should have avoided an area that is already crisscrossed by thousands of miles of existing pipeline? They should have added hundreds of miles of unneeded pipeline (every mile added is another mile that can leak) to avoid, as Clinton put it, “imagined [danger]” because his friend Obama needs votes?