CRISISBOOM

businessweek

Part of the Keystone pipeline (solid line) is already working. Construction on Keystone XL (red dotted line) is supposed to start soon so oil can flow to the Gulf

By Bradley Olson

The 20,000 miles of pipes that carry oil and gas across Nebraska’s open prairies don’t bother Randy Thompson at all. Neither do greenhouse gas emissions or oil geopolitics.

Yet the 63-year-old, Republican-voting rancher and other Nebraska landowners have begun to kick up a lot of dust over the Keystone XL, a 1,711-mile pipeline that, if built, will cut across Nebraska’s heartland as it funnels oil from the Athabasca sands of Alberta, Canada, to Read more…