Pipeline paranoia against Keystone project

NY Times:

...
The round of public hearings by the State Department being held along the pipeline’s proposed route — from acommunity college gymnasium here on Tuesday in rural eastern Montana, through Nebraska and Oklahoma to the Texas Gulf Coast — is ostensibly meant to focus on a single question: Is the pipe in the national interest? 

Addressing that question though — especially through the sprawling sweep of six huge states through which the pipeline or its pumping stations would run like a spine — takes in a universe of conflicting, interlocking issues, from short-term economics to long-term climate, from the discontent of a rural belt losing population to issues of national energy security, joblessness, the environment and prices at the corner pump. 

Hundreds of people have come to the meetings — one on Thursday night in remote Atkinson, Neb., is expected to double the town’s population of about 1,200. From pocketbook economics to global warming, advocates for and against the project say they are making their last stand. 

The State Department concluded last month that the project, Keystone XL, would cause minimal environmental impact if it is operated according to regulations, and the proposed operator, TransCanada, has said the nearly 2,000-mile line would create 20,000 jobs in the United States. Opposition groups around the country, though, said the federal study did not consider the effects of a major spill, while supporters said the nation’s economy had continued to worsen through summer and fall, making Keystone XL all the more crucial. 

“We need the jobs, it’s that simple,” said Bret Marshall, 53, a laborer’s union worker who said he hoped to get work on the line and drove more than 700 miles across Montana to be here for Tuesday night’s hearing.
...

There are thousands of miles of pipeline all over this country.  In fact there is one across the road from my land.  There are people checking on it all the time and there has never been a problem with it.  I regularly get notices telling me to report anything unusualy about the pipeline and I have yet to see anything worth reporting.

I see this as more Henny Penny environmentalism trying to scare people into the agenda of the anti energy left.  They are determine to drive up the price of energy to make inefficient alternative energy look more competitive.  I don't trust them or their arguments.