President Obama vetoes Keystone Pipeline bill
President Obama on Tuesday, as promised, vetoed the Republican led bill approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline, pointing to the long State Department analysis project as an important means to assess the proposed pipeline.
The U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell countered by announcing the Republican-led chamber would attempt to override it by March 3. While that sounds encouraging to GOP supporters, 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 and then to refineries and ports along the U.S. Gulf. It has been pending for more than six years.
“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 U.S. 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.
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.
Opponents of the pipeline praised Obama’s move.
“This veto, along with the president’s increasing public skepticism about Keystone XL … makes us more confident than ever that (the) president will reject the permit itself once and for all,” said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, another pipeline opponent.
This is only the third veto by President Obama during his six years in office. Back in 2013, Unions joined supporters and praised the latest news from State, more here
President Obama’s previously vetoes were a 2009 appropriations change and athe Interstate Recognition of Notarizations (IRON) Act of 2010, which was tied to “Foreclosure Gate”
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This gives me hope that we will finally get serious about climate change. Tar sands oil is the worst form of crude oil for the environment, and should stay in the ground.
The 2013 draft there would be no significant environmental impact to most resources along the proposed route from western Canada to refineries in Texas. The report also said other options to get the oil from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries are worse for climate change.
More here