COLUMBIA, S.C., (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama amplified the concerns of environmentalists about the Keystone XL oil pipeline on Friday and repeated his own reservations the project would have few benefits, but said he has not made a decision on the project.
Obama, explaining the debate over the pipeline to a group of students, described concerns about the “extraordinarily dirty” extraction methods for Canadian oilsands – a description the Canadian government has long argued is unfair.
“The reason that a lot of environmentalists are concerned about it is the way that you get the oil out in Canada is an extraordinarily dirty way of extracting oil, and obviously there are always risks in piping a lot of oil through Nebraska farmland and other parts of the country,” Obama told students at the town hall event.
