Senators vote 62-36 to pass Keystone bill

Again, Obama vows a veto

Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., who is a chief sponsor of the Senate bill to force approval of the pipeline.
Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., who is a chief sponsor of the Senate bill to force approval of the pipeline.

WASHINGTON -- The new Republican-majority Senate on Thursday passed a bill to force approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which President Barack Obama has said he will veto.


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The five-year fight over the pipeline has become a proxy symbol for broader fights with congressional Republicans over climate change, energy and the economy.

The White House promptly declared that Obama would veto the measure -- which would force the approval of the proposed 1,179-mile oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. He previously had threatened to veto the bill if it passed, along with a series of other Republican measures.

The Thursday vote was less than the two-thirds majority that would be needed to override a presidential veto.

The Senate voted 62-36 in favor of building the pipeline. Sens. John Boozman and Tom Cotton of Arkansas both voted in favor.

Boozman, a Republican from Rogers, called the bill a "no-brainer."

"It's been studied to death. All of the environmental studies indicate that it's the best way to go environmentally, it's the best way to go as far as safety reasons, so we need to get it done," Boozman said.

The Senate has spent nearly two weeks talking about the bill.

"I'm excited that we're actually getting legislation moved," Boozman said. "It's just a good sign that Congress is starting to function. We've had more amendments in the last few days than we've had in the entire last Congress."

Republicans overcame a stumble Monday when Democrats, objecting to limits on amendments they could offer, blocked a procedural vote. The two sides then agreed to debate additional amendments, and eventually nine Democrats joined Republicans to end debate on the measure Thursday and allow the final vote.

Senators adopted an amendment to promote energy-efficiency efforts and made other relatively minor changes.

Republicans, meanwhile, blocked Democratic attempts to put the Senate on record saying climate change was a significant problem caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Language saying that "climate change is real" was added, though it didn't ascribe it to man-made causes.

Cotton, a Republican from Dardanelle, said in a statement that the vote came after "weeks of a robust and transparent debate."

"This project is a win for Arkansas as it will lower energy costs, create and sustain hundreds of jobs in the Natural State at Welspun Tubular, and provide our businesses much needed certainty," he added.

The $8 billion Keystone project would run through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, where it would connect to an existing pipeline network that extends to refineries along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Hundreds of miles of pipe for the project were created at the Welspun Tubular LLC facility on Frazier Pike in Little Rock. About 350 miles remain in storage there, and loading the existing pipes would put 50 or more people to work and support close to 200 more positions, including janitorial, maintenance and transport jobs, Welspun USA President David Delie has said.

TransCanada Corp., the company in charge of the proposed pipeline, expressed its appreciation after the vote Thursday.

"TransCanada is encouraged by the strong bipartisan support for Keystone XL by U.S. lawmakers," Russ Girling, the chief executive of the Calgary-based pipeline company, said in a statement.

Passage of the Senate bill sends the measure back to the House, which passed a largely similar bill earlier this month. House leaders are still deciding whether to pass the Senate bill as it is or to hold a conference merging the House and Senate bills into a new bill, which would then be voted on by each chamber.

Either way, the bill is expected to reach the president's desk as soon as next week.

Obama, who currently retains the authority to approve or deny the permitting of the pipeline because it crosses an international border, is expected to veto the bill because it would remove his executive authority to make the final decision.

Pressure is mounting on him from both sides to make the decision, which has been pending since he first took office in 2008. Obama repeatedly has said he was waiting for all reviews and processes to be completed.

In 2013, Obama said that his verdict on the pipeline would be based on whether its construction would worsen climate change. But an 11-volume State Department environmental review of the proposed pipeline, released last year, concluded that its construction would not significantly increase the rate of planet-warming pollution into the atmosphere.

After that review was released, Obama said that he would not issue a decision until a court case in Nebraska over the pipeline's route through that state was settled. Earlier this month, the Nebraska court cleared the way for construction through the state.

Obama also has said he wants to wait until a series of reviews by additional Cabinet agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the departments of Defense, Interior, Homeland Security and Commerce, are complete.

The deadline for those reviews, aimed at determining whether the project is in the national interest, is Monday.

Some people familiar with Obama's thinking said that after all the years of deliberation, he could weigh in as soon as February.

Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., who is a chief sponsor of the Senate bill to force approval of the pipeline, said, "You've got Congress approving it on a bipartisan basis. All six states on the route have approved it. The Nebraska court decision is done. The American people overwhelmingly support it. The president has to consider all that when he makes his decision."

On that point, environmentalist opponents of the pipeline agreed.

"This issue is ready for a decision," said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, one of the groups that has held hundreds of rallies outside the White House and around the country, urging Obama to reject the project. "After the agencies have weighed in, this issue has been examined enough and the president has everything he needs to make this decision."

But Brune expressed confidence that Obama would reject the pipeline.

"I bet your lunch he'll reject it," he said. "We're very confident he'll say no."

Despite the fierce debate over the Keystone pipeline and its potency as a symbol of energy and environmental policy, experts have pointed out repeatedly that the symbolism vastly outweighs its substance.

Environmentalists contend that by providing a conduit to oil from the Alberta oil sands, which produces more carbon pollution when extracted than conventional oil, the pipeline will contribute to climate change. But the State Department review concluded that the oil would be extracted and sent to market with or without the pipeline, via rail and other existing pipelines.

Meanwhile, Republicans promote the project as a source of employment and an economic engine, but the State Department review estimated that Keystone would support only about 35 permanent jobs.

Keystone would create about 42,000 temporary jobs over the two years it will take to build -- about 3,900 of them in construction and the rest in indirect support jobs, such as food service. In comparison, there were 241,000 new jobs created in December alone.

Overall, the jobs represented by Keystone account for less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the U.S. economy.

Information for this article was contributed by Coral Davenport of The New York Times; by Jim Snyder and Kathleen Hunter of Bloomberg News; and by Sarah D. Wire of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

A Section on 01/30/2015

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