Highlighting this anomaly, the public discourse in the U.S. surrounding Keystone XL has largely been framed in familiar environmental and economic terms. The U.S. State Department's approval process for the pipeline has fueled the smoldering debate over the production of oil from Alberta's oil sands. Protesters were arrested by the hundreds during recent demonstrations against the project outside the White House, while just yesterday, more than a hundred demonstrators were arrested outside the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa. Just as passionately, supporters of the project have fanned out to extol its economic, job-creating virtues.

But with high gasoline prices, continued turmoil in North Africa and the Middle East and declining supplies from longtime oil providers Mexico and Venezuela, the energy-security card appears to be a strong one in this debate -- especially given China's investment in the oil sands and its eagerness to develop another pipeline under consideration in Canada, the Northern Gateway project. In assessing the Keystone XL debate, it is worth considering China's effort to tap Canadian energy reserves and direct them to the Chinese market. In many ways, the push for Northern Gateway signals that China's efforts in Alberta are practically indistinguishable from elsewhere in the world, with the imperative being to secure supplies and, when possible, bring barrels to China.

While Keystone XL has become a household name among those active in energy and environmental matters in the U.S., the Northern Gateway project is rarely mentioned. Like Keystone XL, Northern Gateway is a mega-pipeline project to tap the Albertan oil sands. But, instead of a southern route, the pipeline would head west, traversing more than 700 miles to Canada's Pacific coast for export to Asia.

The Northern Gateway project is the culmination of several factors, most importantly supply and demand: China and Asia's craving for oil has soared at the same time that development of Canada's oil sands has become feasible, thanks to the surging global oil market and technological advances.

A New York Times editorial that declared Keystone XL to be the "wrong pipeline, wrong assessment," was perhaps unknowingly prescient. One can imagine Chinese energy policymakers and oilmen nodding affirmatively as they read the headline. For them, the Northern Gateway is the "right pipeline, right assessment."

Add to Northern Gateway's market fundamentals China's ample checkbook and desire to secure global oil supplies along with Canada's interest in diversifying its markets, and all the necessary ingredients are in place to help bring the immense and costly infrastructure project into being. As with Keystone XL, there are entrenched opponents who decry the project's impact on the environment and aboriginal communities, so the battle to build Northern Gateway could become fiercer as it moves forward. But the pipeline's significance should not be overlooked.

It seems unlikely that a zero-sum pipeline game is unfolding in Canada. But what does seem readily apparent is that without continued progress on increased access to the United States market for Canadian crude oil, whether via Keystone XL or an alternative, excess Canadian oil resources developed in the near future could conceivably be routed to Asia through the Northern Gateway pipeline that maintains high-level political and financial support. To wit, the pipeline's developers recently announced that the project was fully subscribed by possible Canadian and Chinese crude oil shippers. 

Indeed, on many levels, Canada may have as strong of a rationale for working with China to build the Northern Gateway as it does for Keystone XL. Beyond the critical element of market diversification, Northern Gateway could also provide an outlet that would allow for more financial upside than the typically discounted U.S. price received by Canadian producers.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu ably summed up the situation when he noted that, when it comes to these types of projects, "there are trade-offs."  Regrettably, the U.S. debate on developing domestic and Canadian energy sources has not yet begun to address the need to consider such trade-offs in an increasingly competitive energy landscape. Rather, the clearest signal being sent is that energy is yet another divisive wedge issue affecting domestic policymakers as well as those charged with diplomacy and international relations.

**Jeremy M. Martin is the director of the Energy Program at the Institute of the Americas at the University of California, San Diego. The institute is a nonprofit inter-American organization focused on economic development in the Western Hemisphere. Martin can be reached at jermartin@ucsd.edu.