Dear Friend,

Call the White House today. Urge President Obama to keep his word -- and not rush a study of the dangers of piping the dirtiest oil into the U.S.

Positive signs. President Obama is finally at least saying his administration will do its homework on the dangers of letting Big Oil company TransCanada build a pipeline to carry the dirtiest oil available -- tar sands oil -- from Canada across America's midsection to Texas.

At a town hall meeting last week, President Obama admitted that the tar sands industry may be “destructive” and assured that his administration will make a decision “based on the science.”

And the State Department announced it will release a second analysis of the environmental risks of this Keystone XL project and consider more public input starting later in April, a concrete victory made possible by the nearly 50,000 messages Friends of the Earth activists sent over the past year.

But we know saying and doing are different animals, and the Obama administration is still sticking to fast-tracked deadlines being pushed by TransCanada and its Big Oil friends.

Can you call President Obama today and ask him to keep his word by ensuring his administration's next study of the impacts of this tar sands oil pipeline is thorough, serious and based on the best science? Click here for a sample script and make your call today.

Because tar sands oil is more corrosive and acidic than conventional oil, these pipelines are more likely to spill.

Last July, a pipeline polluted the Kalamazoo River in Michigan with about one million gallons of tar sands oil, sickening and displacing nearby residents and forcing the closure of a section of the river through this summer. A separate tar sands oil pipeline that TransCanada has been operating for less than a year has already spilled 11 times.

As the New York Times warned in an editorial, a leak from the Keystone XL pipeline could have “disastrous consequences” because it would cut across the nation's largest fresh groundwater source, the Ogallala Aquifer, which two million Americans rely on for drinking water every day.

We cannot let the Obama administration rush a study of what would be the biggest tar sands oil pipeline yet.

Please make a phone call to the White House today. Urge President Obama to do his homework and then to make the only responsible decision -- to tell TransCanada “no” on the Keystone XL pipeline.

Sincerely,
Alex Moore
Dirty Fuels Campaigner, Friends of the Earth