The $7 billion, 1,700-mile long, Keystone XL pipeline — carrying ‘dirty bituminous oil’ from Canada’s Alberta province to Texas Gulf Coast seems to have just passed a final hurdle. And if indications are any guide - it seems to be going ahead finally - despite all the environmental issues associated with it and the stiff resistance from the Greens team.

In its final environmental impact for the pipeline, US State Department said it had little options than affirming earlier findings that the proposed pipeline would have “limited adverse environmental impacts.”

State officials concluded that although oil sands extraction is more carbon-intensive, the pipeline project would not affect Canadian production because companies there would simply ship their heavy crude through other forms of transportation if the pipeline didn’t exist.

The pipeline, once operational, could transport as much as 700,000 barrels of crude a day from Canada’s “tar sands” or “oil sands” fields to refineries in the Gulf Coast, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

Since the Middle East accounts for most of the world’s oil reserves, supply security would be lessened, pipeline promoters emphasize. If the pipeline isn’t built, the US would need to replace much of that oil from overseas. And the State Department is well aware of the fact.

Without the pipeline, TransCanada President for Energy and Oil Pipelines Alexander J. Pourbaix said, the US would become more dependent on oil-producing nations.

“The US is going to remain dependent on crude oil for decades to come. The only question left to determine is; where will that crude oil come from,” he said. And moving oil by pipeline is considerably safer, and environmentally more acceptable than shipping oil by supertankers, they point out.

US imports about nine million barrels a day.

If and indeed when the Keystone pipeline is fully operating, Canadian oil shipped to the US would double, reaching a projected five million barrels a day by 2020.

Canada would account for at least 40 percent of US oil imports even earlier, within the decade too.

It’s no secret that China covets Canadian oil.

China is willing to finance construction of a pipeline from Alberta to Canada’s West Coast.

The US should not allow that to happen, pipeline proponents insist.

Energy security and the pipelines impact “broader foreign policy objectives.”

The very notion that depending on the ‘unreliable and the unstable Middle East’ posed a greater threat to the US interests, seemed to carry the day.

The report also pointed out that the pipeline would help meet America’s long-term need for crude oil.

It was thus an issue much beyond the environmental check, one can simply deduce.

State Department senior officials though insist that the report “is one piece of the information that will be considered” in making a final decision on the permit by the end of the year.

TransCanada, the pipeline operator, in a statement after the State Department verdict said the assessment, which is more than 1,000 pages long, “reaffirmed the environmental integrity of the project.”

“Today’s Final Environmental Impact Statement continues to demonstrate the focus on safety and the environment that has gone into the development of this critical North American pipeline,” said Russ Girling, TransCanada’s president and chief executive officer.

The department will now conduct a 90-day review of whether the project is in the “national interest” before deciding whether to allow the pipeline to go through.

The report also concluded; “there would be no significant impact to most resources along the proposed pipeline corridor,” though it conceded some American Indian culture resources and the endangered American burying beetle could be affected.

Project proponents, including United Association General president William Hite, whose union represents plumbers and pipe-fitters in North America - say it would employ thousands of Americans.

“It’s a job engine for the country at a time when we need the jobs, and until we do something else, we need the oil,” Hite said in an interview.

“I don’t see how we can turn it down.”

A recent study prepared for TransCanada by the Perryman Group forecasts that the Keystone pipeline’s construction and operation, and continued oil-sands development, would ultimately create in excess of 300,000 jobs in the US.

Before making a final verdict, though, the department would hold 13 public meetings in nine cities between Sept. 26 and Oct. 6 to get feedback.

The sessions will take place in several states the project will traverse, including Montana, Nebraska, Kansas and Texas.

Yet the 2 1/2-year-long review is significant as the primary objection to its potential environmental impact - on wildlife, land and drinking water supplies - has now been taken care of.

Yet the debate is far from over.

Whether, yes or no, the final decision also threatens to turn into a political liability for US President Barack Obama.

The pipeline decision poses a key test for Obama, says Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth.

If the administration fails to issue a permit, it could bolster Republican and corporate claims that Obama has failed in job creation.

Business has poured millions of dollars into lobbying campaigns asserting the pipeline will create hundreds of thousands of construction jobs and secure oil from a friendly, democratic neighbor, displacing oil from places such as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.

If the administration does issue the permit, it risks alienating the environmental base that helped bring Obama to power in 2008 and whose energy and money the president desperately needs in 2012.

The proposed pipeline has sparked an outcry from environmentalists in both, the US and Canada.

They insist it will increase emissions linked to climate change.

Activists have mounted daily sit-ins at the White House to protest the project, resulting in hundreds of arrests so far.

National Wildlife Federation energy policy adviser Ryan Salmon questioned aspects of the report, noting that it anticipates between 1.78 and 2.5 spills a year even though a smaller section of Keystone pipeline that opened last year has already experienced 14 spills.

Current oil sands production, which is located in a 232-square-mile area in Alberta, accounts for 49 megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent a year, according to the Canadian government.

That is more than the total amount of CO2 emitted annually by the city of Chicago.

These emissions are expected to rise to 92 megatons by 2020, as Canada doubles its tar sands production.

Rep. Edward J. Markey (Massachusetts), the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, wrote a letter recently to US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton complaining the department failed to fully analyze the impact on wildlife along the corridor such as the endangered whooping crane.

Emotions are running high!

Opponents, however, fail to understand that the Administration’s eyes are set on the higher, geopolitical objectives and not the worldly environmental considerations. These are only for us, the lesser creatures, to consider.