Congress Attempts to Accelerate Decision on Keystone XL Pipeline through Tax Measure
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Protestors gathered outside the State Department building in Washington D.C. during a scheduled hearing to oppose the 1,700-mile Keystone XL Pipeline which would carry tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada to refineries in Texas.
Hidden in that two-month payroll-tax extension lingering in the House—as members refuse to move forward, despite a favorable vote from the Senate and pushes from President Obama—is a rider that would force construction of the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline.
The rider is one of several on the bill and is a provision that attempts to accelerate the pipeline decision. The State Department’s decision on TransCanada’s controversial 1,700-mile pipeline was delayed after thousands of climate activists sent a message to President Obama in November, surrounding the White House on all sides. Obama is expected to make the final decision on the project and has threatened to veto the Keystone provision.
Since the delay, TransCanada announced it would reroute the pipeline away from Nebraska’s sensitive Sand Hills region, a key demand by environmental protesters, in a bid to strengthen the project’s final approval.
Obama must determine whether or not the pipeline is in the national interest. But, the State Department is finally stepping up on the issue, releasing a statement Monday warning Congress against forcing its hand on the decision.
"Should Congress impose an arbitrary deadline for the permit decision, its actions would not only compromise the process, it would prohibit the Department from acting consistently with National Environmental Policy Act requirements," the State Department said, according to the Huffington Post. "In the absence of properly completing the process, the Department would be unable to make a determination to issue a permit for this project."
The State Department’s original review of the project came under fire by environmental groups after the release of a highly flawed Environment Impact Statement.
Then, open records requested by climate activists revealeddetails of possible State Department corruption,as documents showed that one of the top TransCanada lobbyists, Paul Elliot, may have violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act by lobbying for the company before he was registered. Elliot was the former deputy director of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Since the Senate passed a payroll tax measure Saturday, members in the House have stalled the omnibus budget bill from advancing and called on the Senate for more talks as the holiday season approaches.
Which leaves the Keystone XL provision in limbo until something more concrete comes out of Congress.
But if the House can’t get the pipeline decision accelerated, they have another option—speeding up a review of the pipeline project. A forced review of the pipeline project could actually delay it for several more years, according to a reader of Ezra Klein’s Washington Post blog who works on environmental compliance. A forced decision or review of the project could end with a red light from the State Department entirely or become held up in the court system.
This angling begs the question of why the Keystone XL Pipeline has become so important to some members of Congress, especially as part of a year-end tax showdown. Some elected officials have cited figures that indicate the pipeline will create some 20,000 jobs—a claim that is dodgy at best.
“Hundreds of thousands of people around the country rallied this fall to oppose the climate-killing Keystone pipeline, and the administration heard them and ordered a new review,” 350.org Founder Bill McKibben responded to the House vote at Tar Sands Action.“Now a tiny coterie of Congressmen is trying to revive the plan, and every one of them has taken big payments from the Big Oil. Everyone around America can do the math–all you have to do is follow the dirty money.”
Candice Bernd is a staff writer with Campus Progress. Follow her on Twitter @CandiceBernd.
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