Keystone XL Pipeline Decision Reportedly Will Come in Mid June

Levi Rickert, editor-in-chief in Native Challenges. Discussion »

WASHINGTON – The State Department will not make a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until at least June, according to a Reuters story published last Thursday.

Protect the Sacred Gathering in Pickstown, South Dakota

The news agency quoted an unnamed source, who did not want to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the TransCanada project.

“We're talking the beginning of summer at the earliest. It's not weeks until the final decision. It's months,”

according to the unnamed source.

The Keystone XL Project is a 1700 mile long crude oil pipeline that would transport between 700,000 to 900,000 barrels of crude oil per day. This pipeline is planned to extend from Alberta, Canada and pass through the states of Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas on its way to the Gulf of Mexico for storage and export overseas.

American Indians and environmentalists oppose the pipeline.

The proposed pipeline coming down through the Plains states has caused great concern, particularly among the Oglala in South Dakota.

TransCanada's proposed pipeline route is right though the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations. It will cross the Oglala Sioux Rural Water Supply System in two places.

During third week of January over three days, when over two hundred tribal leaders and community members attended the Protect the Sacred Gathering in Pickstown, South Dakota. One the third day they had produced the "International Treaty to Protect the Sacred from Tar Sands Projects" and signed the document.

Article V of the Treaty reads:

“We affirm that our laws define our solemn duty and responsibility to our ancestors, to ourselves, and to future generations, to protect the lands and waters of our homelands and we agree to mutually and collectively oppose tar sands projects which would impact our territories, including but not limited to the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline, the Enbridge Northern Gateway, Enbridge lines nine and sixty seven, or the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline and tanker projects.”

The news the State Department may have delayed the final decision, but the group who met in Pickstown realizes they still have work to do.

posted February 4, 2013 9:50 am est