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llhan Omar Wants Joe Biden to Kill Another Pipeline From Canada

Rep. Ilhan Omar, center, was in northern Minnesota last week to support Indigenous leaders organizing to stop Line 3.

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar is calling on President Joe Biden to block a new pipeline from Canada that she says carries “the dirtiest fossil fuel on the planet,” warning that it will accelerate the climate emergency and endanger the drinking water of Indigenous peoples. 

“We’re urging him and hope that he will act,” the Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota told VICE News in an interview. “President Biden has the opportunity to be a climate president.” 

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Omar is referring to Line 3, a “massive” 337-mile pipeline expansion from the Canadian company Enbridge that would carry 760,000 barrels of oil per day across Minnesota to a terminal in Wisconsin. The existing pipeline carries about half of that—390,000 barrels per day. Line 3 was first proposed in 2014 and construction began in December. 

Much of that increased oil would come from the Canadian tar sands, the third-largest oil reserves in the world, which have a 17 percent larger impact on the climate on average than other oil sources, according to the U.S. State Department. In general, the industry’s carbon intensity is in the top quartile of all global oil operations. 

“This pipeline nearly doubles the volume of tar sands crude oil,” Omar said. “It’s the dirtiest fossil fuel on the planet and that’s going to be coming in through Minnesota. We cannot meet our carbon reduction targets if this project goes through.”   

The Red Lake and White Earth Nations and other groups filed a federal lawsuit against the project late last December, arguing that in addition to climate impacts it poses unacceptable risks to their water supplies. Line 3 would cross more than 200 water bodies and 800 wetlands in northern Minnesota, and critics point to a Enbridge pipeline leak in 2010, which spilled 843,000 gallons of tar sands into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River, as evidence of what could go wrong. 

In Canada, a 2014 study from the University of Manitoba found significant incidents of cancer, asthma, diabetes, and other diseases among First Nations living 120 miles or so downstream from the tar sands.

Omar met with Indigenous leaders fighting Line 3 over the weekend in northern Minnesota. She told VICE News that “we need to fully stand in solidarity with them and see ourselves as water protectors.” 

Despite this opposition, courts and regulators have sided so far with Enbridge’s Line 3, including dismissing a request this week from the Red Lake and White Earth Nations to stop construction. The Canadian government wants it built. Enbridge expects the project could be completed by the summer.

“The existing Line 3 was built in the 1960s and is part of the Enbridge crude oil pipeline system, which crosses the Mississippi in Minnesota and has done so safely for decades, while co-existing with some of the state’s most productive wild rice waters,” a company spokesperson wrote to VICE News. “Upgrading an aging line with new pipe made of thicker steel with technologically advanced coatings will better protect Minnesota’s environment and waters for generations to come.” 

Omar and other critics disagree. Citing “the project’s disproportionate impacts on Indigenous communities, Enbridge’s abysmal safety and spill history in the U.S., and the scale of disturbances required to construct a pipeline of this scale in seasonal wetlands,” as well as its climate impacts, the congresswoman sent a letter to Biden on Wednesday morning asking him to intervene. 

“I urge you to make the one decision supported by the scientific consensus on climate change: Stop Line 3,” she wrote in the letter. 

Omar is hopeful he’ll listen. “I’ve been encouraged by his boldness, including his rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline,” she said. “As he did with Keystone, we hope that he will use his authority to stop the construction of Line 3.” 

One way he could do that is by ordering that construction stop while the project completes a federal environmental impact statement, which it currently lacks. Line 3’s approval was based on a state-level statement, which critics say doesn’t properly account for the dire environmental consequences should it spill into Lake Superior, nor the huge climate footprint of bringing nearly 800,000 barrels per day of tar sands oil into the U.S.

VICE News reached out to Biden’s office and will update the story when we hear back.

“Biden should cancel it. The project doesn’t meet his climate standards; it is a huge risk for this country,” said Winona LaDuke, an Anishinaabe author and activist who is executive director of Honour the Earth, an Indigenous-led group that is also part of the federal court challenge

The Minnesota Department of Commerce is also trying to halt the pipeline, arguing that the oil it would transport is not needed at a time when demand in the state and across the world isn’t growing. 

There are legitimate legal arguments in favor of the Biden administration pausing or halting construction, said Alexandra Klass, an environmental law professor at the University of Minnesota, but time is running out. 

“Once the pipeline is built,” she told VICE News, “it’s a lot harder to get it out.” 

Follow Geoff Dembicki on Twitter.