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KUT's StateImpact Texas Talks Keystone XL Pipeline on 'The Takeaway'

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The controversial Keystone XL Pipeline is taking over national headlines again. 

Last week, the State Department released an environmental review of the pipeline, finding tar sands extraction would have little impact on greenhouse gas emissions. 

As KUT's StateImpact Texas reports, "tar sands oil will be extracted regardlessof whether or not the pipeline is built."

KUT's Mose Buchele talked with The Takeaway this morning about the impact that the largest oil producer in the world is having in Texas.

The pipeline will take heavy oil harvested from tar sands in Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

"Texas isn't getting a lot of that tar sands oil that is so controversial [right now], but we are seeing this pipeline in operation here," Buchele told the Takeaway. "This is perhaps going to be oil refined in the United States, but it may not free us from the international markets."

According to StateImpact Texas, TransCanada used eminent domain to route the pipeline through private land in some instances in Texas. "Several cases by landowners against the pipeline are still making their way through Texas courts."

"We build pipelines everywhere in America every day. There's nothing complex about the Keystone pipeline—it's time to build it,” U.S House Speaker John Boehner said at a news conference yesterday. 

At peak capacity, Keystone XL Pipeline will deliver 830,000 barrels of oil per day to Gulf Coast refineries. The pipeline section that runs from Oklahoma to Texas began commercial operations this month.

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