From Huffington post:

Let's try to deconstruct the hype to assess what the decision really means.

Foreign Oil and Energy Independence

Not surprisingly, some are characterizing the president's pipeline halt as a blow to our energy security and independence and a gift, in the form of petrodollars, to Middle East oil sheiks. Presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, for example, said the decision shows that Obama isn't serious about "achieving energy independence." Such conclusions seem off the mark.

1.Energy Security: The tiny amount of oil coming into the United States from the XL pipeline would have represented less than 4 percent of our total consumption. And it's projected that a significant amount of that would not be used domestically but would be sold to other countries.

2.Energy Independence: The United States already gets most of its oil from Canada. The pipeline would neither alter that supply nor affect our dependence on "foreign oil."


3.Geopolitical Implication: The price of oil, for the most part a fungible commodity, is essentially determined by total global consumption, not who buys it. The same goes for the number of petrodollars that flow to foreign nations hostile to the United States. Because we're such a large consumer of oil (about 20 percent of the global total), how much we consume has a huge effect on oil prices and therefore the profits of foreign producers. Whether we build the pipeline or not is essentially irrelevant. How much oil we consume and whether we institute oil-saving policies, like miles-per-gallon standards on automobiles, are what counts.

Environmental Protections

1.Climate: The president's decision is at best a symbolic victory for those wanting to clamp down on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
•The extra amount of CO2 that would be emitted by the pipeline's tar sand oil would make the smallest of blips in our national emissions -- on the order of a few percent.

•It's a virtual certainty that that tar sand oil will find a consumer elsewhere.


2.Ecosystem Protection: Concerns that the pipeline would have traversed some very sensitive and valuable ecosystems (including the Ogallala Aquifer) were justified. And so the environmentalists do have cause for some celebration there.

But even without the Obama decision the pressure against the proposed path for the Keystone XL pipeline was building. For example, Nebraska has stepped in and passed two laws: the first giving the state pipeline-siting authority, and the second requiring that the pipeline's path be altered to avoid environmentally sensitive areas (more on this here).