{"id":20501,"date":"2015-11-04T09:05:34","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T17:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/keystone-backers-eye-obamas-successor-to-make-the-call\/"},"modified":"2015-11-04T09:05:34","modified_gmt":"2015-11-04T17:05:34","slug":"keystone-backers-eye-obamas-successor-to-make-the-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/keystone-backers-eye-obamas-successor-to-make-the-call\/","title":{"rendered":"Keystone backers eye Obama’s successor to make the call"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON<\/strong> \u2014 The company pleading for permission to build the Keystone XL pipeline looked beyond President Barack Obama on Tuesday in apparent hopes a future Republican president would greenlight the project. But the administration signaled it was in no mood to hand off the decision to the winner of the 2016 election.<\/p>\n

TransCanada insisted its request for the U.S. to suspend its review of the proposed project had nothing to do with presidential politics even though a delay could thrust the decision a year or more into the future, likely putting it in the hands of Obama\u2019s successor. Questioning the motivation for the Canadian energy giant\u2019s request, the White House said \u201cthere might be politics at play\u201d and Obama still intended to make the decision.<\/p>\n

It was an unusual reversal of roles for TransCanada, which complained bitterly for years about Obama\u2019s delays before suddenly requesting one of its own. Likewise, Obama\u2019s administration, after seven years of delay, seemed to discover a newfound sense of urgency when faced with the prospect of letting the next president make the call.<\/p>\n

The State Department, the official arbiter of the pipeline permit, said it was considering TransCanada\u2019s new request but in the meantime the pipeline review would move forward unabated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d like to finish this review process as swiftly as possible,\u201d spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said Tuesday. That was 2,601 days after TransCanada first proposed the $8 billion project.<\/p>\n

For TransCanada, a delay into 2017 might improve the prospects for approval \u2014 if a Republican wins the White House. The GOP presidential field is unanimous in its support for Keystone, while Obama has downplayed its benefits and emphasized environmental risks, setting up a high bar for approval.<\/p>\n

All of the major Democratic candidates oppose it \u2014 including front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, who oversaw the early phase of the pipeline review as Obama\u2019s first-term secretary of state.<\/p>\n

Ahead of TransCanada\u2019s request, Keystone supporters had feared Obama would seize on a brief window between Canada\u2019s recent elections and the conclusion of global climate talks next month to kill the project in grand fashion, solidifying his environmental bona fides. Obama hopes to make a global climate pact the capstone of his environmental legacy and has sought to show aggressive action to curb carbon dioxide emissions as world leaders prepare to finalize an agreement in Paris.<\/p>\n

For Obama, the 1,179-mile proposed pipeline has swelled over the years into a behemoth political hot potato. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama had sought to \u201cshield this process from politics,\u201d but the president\u2019s many delays have only injected more politics and posturing into the national debate.<\/p>\n

Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., a vocal Keystone supporter, said it would be inconsistent for Obama to reject TransCanada\u2019s request since the company has worked diligently to meet every legal and regulatory hurdle.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre they going to have a double standard here? They\u2019ve held TransCanada up for almost seven years,\u201d Hoeven said in an interview.<\/p>\n

While most cross-border pipelines take less than 18 months to approve or reject, Keystone\u2019s has dragged on since September 2008 \u2014 shortly before Obama was elected. In late 2011, Obama announced he would hold off until after the 2012 election, taking the issue off the table for his own re-election fight. When Congress tried to force his hand, he rejected the application but allowed TransCanada to re-apply.<\/p>\n

As envisioned, Keystone XL would extend from Alberta\u2019s tar sands to Nebraska, where it will connect with existing pipelines carrying crude oil to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast. Another delay in 2014, ostensibly prompted by a dispute over the Nebraska route, further pushed the decision until after the 2014 midterm elections.<\/p>\n

The pipeline has drawn intense ire from environmental groups who say it\u2019s inconsistent with Obama\u2019s goal to cut emissions and reduce dependency on fossil fuels. Yet Republicans, energy advocates and other supporters maintain it will create jobs and reduce U.S. reliance on Middle Eastern oil.<\/p>\n

TransCanada cited the ongoing legal questions in Nebraska as the reason to delay.<\/p>\n

However, the sense of urgency that for years characterized the company\u2019s approach may have fallen off recently amid a sharp drop in oil prices. Once topping $100 a barrel, crude oil has fallen to less than $50, making the business of extracting and transporting the product much less lucrative. By keeping a decision at bay for another year or more, TransCanada could await a potential resurgence in the price of oil while increasing its prospects for Keystone\u2019s approval.<\/p>\n

But TransCanada CEO Russ Girling, in a conference call to discuss corporate earnings Tuesday, said Keystone remains economically viable for the company, noting that oil prices are about the same now as they were in 2008 when the company first applied.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writer Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 The company pleading for permission to build the Keystone XL pipeline looked beyond President Barack Obama on Tuesday in apparent hopes a future Republican president would greenlight the project. But the administration signaled it was in no mood to hand off the decision to the winner of the 2016 election. TransCanada insisted its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":20502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-20501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20501"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=20501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}