Canada’s natural resources minister challenges Hollywood’s Robert Redford over Keystone pipeline

It's Joe Oliver versus the Sundance Kid. Canada's minister of natural resources is facing off against Hollywood legend Robert Redford in a showdown over the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

The legendary actor and director posted a an op-ed video on the New York Times web site this week urging U.S. President Barak Obama to reject approval of the proposed line to take crude from Canadian oil sands south to refineries on the Gulf Coast.

Calling it the dirtiest oil in the world, Redford warned the route of the line owned by Calgary-based TransCanada Pipelines threatens the environment of America's mid-west breadbasket.

"In piping tar sands crude across our country it will expose America to the kind of ruptures and blowouts that brought environmental disaster in just the past year to … the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico and for what? Enriching the oil industry — that's what," Redford says.

"Mr. President, stand up for energy security you know we deserve — say no to the Keystone XL."

But Oliver is calling out the longtime supporter of environmental causes on his knowledge of the pipeline project.

"I'm not a scientist, most people aren't. And neither, to my knowledge, is Robert Redford," Oliver said in a conference call with reporters while in Paris to lobby European Union officials on oil sands, Reuters reported. "I'm more impressed by independent scientific evaluation."

TransCanada has made assurances about the line's safety and claims it will have limited environmental iimpact.

The U.S. government is expected to decide by the end of this year whether the pipeline project will go ahead. Worth about US$7 billion, it has widespread support both as a much-needed job-creator and a way to secure a reliable supply of oil from an ally next door.

But opponents argue the line will encourage development of the oil sands, whose production is condemned for high levels of carbon emissions. Critics also worry even a small rupture pipeline rupture could contaminate water supplies along the route.