White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the bill was received from Congress on Tuesday and Obama will issue only the third veto of his presidency to reject it. He said it’s “certainly possible” that Obama would approve the pipeline once a State Department review of the project is completed.
“The president will keep an open mind,” Earnest said, without giving a timeline for a decision.
In passing the legislation, the Republican-controlled House and Senate both fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto. That will leave Republican leaders searching for more votes if they want to keep the measure alive, which they vowed to do.
“The president is sadly mistaken if he thinks vetoing this bill will end this fight. Far from it. We are just getting started,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner wrote in an opinion article Tuesday in USA Today.
Circumventing Review
Obama’s decision was never in doubt. He’s repeatedly said a State Department review of the TransCanada Corp. project -- which would carry crude oil produced in Alberta, Canada, south through the U.S. -- should proceed before a decision is made on whether to allow construction of the $8 billion pipeline.
The bill “seeks to circumvent longstanding and proven processes for determining whether cross-border pipelines serve the national interest by authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline project prior to the completion of the presidential permitting process,” Obama wrote in a notice of his intentions to Congress on Jan. 7.
The State Department has given no firm timeline for its review of the pipeline, which was first proposed six years ago. Earnest said Tuesday he had no update on the process.
“I would anticipate that once the review has been completed, there would not be a significant delay in announcing the results of that review” making a final decision, he said.
Two Sides
The project has pitted Republicans and some labor groups, who argue construction and operation of the pipeline would bring thousands of jobs, against environmental advocates who warn that leaks would spoil land along its route and exploiting the crude from tar sands will contribute to climate change.
Consulting firm IHS Inc. said in a study released Monday that most of the oil transported by theKeystone pipeline would be consumed in the U.S. and that the project would have a “negligible” impact on greenhouse gas emissions because use of North American oil would replace imported crude.
Obama, who’s made fighting climate change a main focus of his last two years in office, has stayed away from giving a final opinion on the project’s merits while saying he’d oppose if it would significantly increase carbon dioxide emissions.
Landowners in Nebraska, which the pipeline would traverse, are also fighting it in state court. TransCanada earlier this month agreed to delay acquiring land in the state while it deals with claims by landowners that the law that lets the company appropriate their property is invalid.
Falling oil prices and an improving U.S. job market have conspired conspire to weaken practical or political payoffs for Keystone advocates.
After using his veto pen only twice during his first term, the lowest of any president since James Garfield, who served only 200 days before he was assassinated, the Republican takeover of the Senate prompted Obama since the start of the year to threaten vetoes of 12 other pieces of legislation
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