Review Offers Hope to Pipeline Backers

A long-awaited State Department review of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline failed to reach firm conclusions on the project's environmental impact, but it lent support to backers of the contentious plan on several key points.

Industry groups cheered the draft review, saying the hundreds of pages of technical assessments didn't turn up major issues with the plan to ship oil from Canadian tar sands through the northern Great Plains.

The assessment found that under a revised route offered last year by pipeline builder TransCanada Corp., "there would be no significant impacts to most resources along the proposed project route."

The ...

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