Obama Vetoes Keystone XL Pipeline, Leaving It in Limbo
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - President Barack Obama, as promised, swiftly vetoed a Republican bill approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline, leaving the long-debated project in limbo for another indefinite period.
The US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, after receiving Obama's veto message, immediately countered by announcing the Republican-led chamber would attempt to override it by March 3.
That is unlikely. Despite their majority, Republicans are four votes short of being able to overturn Obama's veto.
They have vowed to attach language approving the pipeline to a spending bill or other legislation later in the year that the president would find difficult to veto.
The TransCanada Corp pipeline would carry 830,000 barrels a day of mostly Canadian oil sands crude to Nebraska en route to refineries and ports along the US Gulf. It has been pending for more than six years.
Obama, who rejected the bill hours after it was sent to the White House, said the measure unwisely bypassed a State Department process that will determine whether the project would be beneficial to the United States.
"Through this bill, the United States Congress attempts to circumvent longstanding and proven processes for determining whether or not building and operating a cross-border pipeline serves the national interest," he wrote in his veto message.
Republicans, who support the project because of its job-creation potential, made passing a bill a top priority after the November election, when they gained control of the US Senate and strengthened their majority in the House of Representatives.
The bill passed by 270-152 in the House earlier this month and cleared the Senate in January, Reuters reported.
Obama has played down Keystone XL's ability to create jobs and raised questions about its effects on climate change. Environmentalists, who made up part of the coalition that elected the president in 2008 and 2012, oppose the project because of carbon emissions involved in getting the oil it would carry out of Canadian tar sands.
TransCanada Chief Executive Russ Girling said in a statement the company was “fully committed” to Keystone XL despite Obama’s veto and would work with the State Department to answer any questions it has about the project.
