The much-debated Keystone XL pipeline could produce four times more global warming pollution than the State Department calculated earlier this year, a new study concludes, according to The Associated Press.
The new estimates, from scientists at the Stockholm Environment Institute, were published Sunday by the journal Nature Climate Change, the AP reported.
The United States estimates didn't take into account that the added oil from the pipeline would drop prices by about $3 a barrel, spurring consumption that would create more pollution, the researchers said, the AP reported.
Outside experts not connected to the study gave it mixed reviews and the American Petroleum Institute found the study to be irrelevant because regardless of the pipeline, the tar sands will be developed and oil will be shipped by railroad if not by pipeline, spokeswoman Sabrina Fang said, according to the AP.
The researchers estimate that the proposed pipeline, which would carry oil from tar sands in western Canada to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast, would increase world greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 121 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, the AP reported.
The emissions have been on the mind of President Barack Obama, who has said his administration would allow the pipeline to be built "only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution," according to the AP.
An increase of 121 million tons of carbon dioxide is dwarfed by the 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide the world pumped into the air in 2013, the AP reported.
That's why University of Sussex economist Richard Tol dismissed the calculated Keystone effect as merely a drop in the bucket. If somebody is concerned about climate change, he wrote in an email, the pipeline "should be the furthest from your mind," according to the AP.
