The Keystone XL question, the pipeline that has divided the United States since 2008, is not as distant as it may appear at first glance. There are several reasons why the construction of a pipe carrying bitumen — a low-grade oil — from Canadian lands to the southern American coast is of direct concern to those of us living on the European continent and, in particular, to us Italians.

One. The first reason concerns, as is easy to say, the climate risks this project entails. It is well known that global warming is a phenomenon that knows no borders. CO2 and the greenhouse gases emitted on the other side of the world have negative effects — climate change — even thousands of kilometres away. So just as burning coal in China, the dirtiest and most climate-damaging fossil fuel, has an effect on the reduction of Arctic ice, extracting, transporting and refining Canadian bitumen can likewise accelerate the sea-level rise that threatens Italy's coastlines, such as the Venice lagoon, to cite a place dear to us.

Two. Compared to the extraction of Arabian oil, oil extracted from oil sands would cause emissions 17 per cent higher per barrel produced, and specifically, the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline would increase annual US CO2 emissions by 30 million tonnes, according to the environmental organisation Friends of Earth. As if, all of a sudden, another 5.6 million cars were thrown onto the roads on top of those already in circulation worldwide. Not to mention the waste of water used in extraction — an increasingly precious resource in Italy as in the rest of the world, owing to an expansion of arid zones caused by an increase in periods of drought. But there is one aspect that risks affecting us even more directly.

Three. In September 2014, two Italian members of parliament, Michele Piras and Giulio Marcon, following a tip-off received from a network of American environmental organisations, asked the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Economic Development for information on the possibility that the very same bitumen extracted in the Alberta region of Canada could reach Italy — specifically Sardinia — at the Sarroch refineries owned by the Saras group, one of the few equipped with the technology capable of refining even the lowest-grade crude oil. The Canadian bitumen would have been transported by the vessel Minerva Gloria, which flies a Greek flag.

This means that our country could have become directly responsible for a practice that is dangerous both for Sardinia's environment and for the global climate. Bitumen requires a longer and more complex refining process, which means increasing the environmental impact of a refinery on the territory where it is located. It also requires greater energy consumption, forcing an inevitable rise in our country's CO2 emissions.

Saras's response. The Sardinian group responded to the parliamentary question tabled by the two MPs, stating that the vessel Minerva Gloria, which arrived at Sarroch in the first half of October, was carrying "a cargo of ordinary crude oil of Canadian origin, not oil sands." Crude whose "chemical-physical characteristics were analogous, for example, to the majority of Middle Eastern crudes." For this reason, "in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, the refining process for this crude oil" would have been "absolutely equivalent to that applied to other crudes at all European facilities."

A picture that offers little reassurance, given that the new pipeline terminating on the Texas coast of the Gulf of Mexico has the precise objective of reducing overland transport times so that bitumen can set sail overseas more quickly. "To find out whether what Saras says is true, the only tool available is a judicial investigation," said Piras. An article in Il Sole 24 Ore also leaves open the possibility that oil sands crude could soon reach Italy, given that "the European Union no longer appears to have any objections to this type of crude."

The question of the Keystone XL pipeline does not concern only Canada or the United States — it is a problem that affects everyone. That is why we must hope that US President Barack Obama's decision to veto the pipeline in the event of approval by the US Congress is upheld. And we should be rooting for him in this challenge.