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Friday, April 20, 2012

House Republicans Revive Bid to Advance Keystone Pipeline

By Jim Snyder on April 16, 2012


U.S. House Republicans, unsuccessful in overturning President Barack Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline permit, will try again this week, using legislation to extend highway spending for three months.
Passage in the House would give Republican leaders another chance to advance the pipeline as gasoline prices remain higher than $3.90 a gallon. Language in the legislation, which would pay for highway, bridge and transit programs through September, gives the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 30 days to issue a permit for the pipeline. A vote may be scheduled on April 18.
Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, said in the Republican’s April 14 weekly radio address that Keystone would “have decreased our dependence on oil from unstable regions of the world.”
The Keystone section in the highway bill is identical to legislation the House approved on Feb. 16 as part of a larger transportation package that some Republicans said cost too much.
In the Senate, Democrats on March 9 blocked an amendment to the transportation bill that effectively would approve Keystone without further federal action, with 11 Democrats joining Republicans in support.
“Gas prices have doubled under President Obama, but the Senate-passed transportation bill does nothing to help,” Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said in an e-mailed statement.

‘Too Early’

Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, said Senate leaders haven’t been able to assess whether support exists among lawmakers for the Keystone XL project if FERC is given jurisdiction to issue the permit. Senators return today after a two-week recess.
“It’s too early to say,” Jentleson said today.
The $7 billion TransCanada Corp. (TRP) pipeline would carry crude from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries along the Gulf Coast. Obama rejected in January the company’s application because he said a deadline set by Congress for action, imposed after the project was delayed until 2013, didn’t allow sufficient time to weigh potential environmental risks.
Officials in Nebraska objected to the pipeline’s route across Nebraska’s Sandhills region, which overlays the Ogallala aquifer that provides drinking water for 1.5 million people.
The House highway bill would extend funding for three months. While the Republican-led House and the Democratic- controlled Senate passed a 90-day extension before the two-week congressional recess at the end of March, the two sides have been unable to agree to a longer-term deal.
The Senate passed a two-year extension of the highway bill without language on Keystone in March. The Republican highway measure may allow the House and Senate to begin a conference committee to try to reach a compromise on the impasse.

House passes Keystone XL pipeline - again

Construction of a pipeline is shown. | Reuters

The Keystone XL pipeline seems to be the issue that that simply refuses to die. | Reuters

It’s the issue that simply refuses to die.
House Republicans wrote a new chapter in the long-running debate over the Keystone XL pipeline Wednesday by approving it as part of a 90-day extension of surface transportation law.

Wednesday’s 293-127 vote on the transportation extension was the fifth time the House voted on the proposed oil pipeline project in the last two years.
It was the third time House Republicans adopted the language authorizing the FERC to approve the pipeline — and there’s no indication either side will let up.
“We keep fouling them off,” said Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.), lead author of the FERC plan. “We’re going to keep swinging until we finally hit it.”
Critics of the pipeline say Republicans are just treading water.
“It’s a big game of chicken the Republicans are playing,” Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said. “They’re trying to play to their base in saying, ‘We’re going to pass it again through the House.’ But they’ve passed a lot of things through the House that haven’t gone anywhere. I have a feeling this may be among those.”
The White House on Tuesday threatened to veto the Keystone language.
“Good, let him veto it,” Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) said. “I hope that we just keep putting Keystone in there. He’ll just keep vetoing it and I think the more he does it the more he does damage to himself.”
Republicans are trying to force a showdown with the White House and Senate Democrats in a conference committee that would feature Wednesday’s House bill and a two-year, $109 billion Senate-passed transportation bill the Obama administration enthusiastically backs.
The Keystone amendment failed last month in the Senate 56-42 — four short of the needed 60 — after Obama personally called senators to lobby them to oppose the amendment directly before the vote.
But 11 Democratic senators still voted for the amendment.
In December, Republicans secured a symbolic victory when they were able to include language in the must-pass payroll tax cut extension deal forcing Obama to make a decision within two months on granting a presidential permit to Keystone XL.


Romney: I'll build Keystone pipeline even ‘if I have to do it myself'




Mitt Romney vowed Friday that, if elected president, he would build the controversial Keystone Pipeline linking oil deposits in Canada to refineries on the Texas gulf coast.
"I will build that pipeline if I have to do it myself," Romney said during a speech before state Republican Party leaders gathered at a retreat in Arizona.
It was Romney's first major appearance before party officials as the party's presumptive presidential nominee. But Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, who was chairing the event, stopped short of formally endorsing the former Massachusetts governor as the GOP nominee, because Romney has not officially clinched the necessary number of delegates required to claim the nomination.
Romney, who took the stage to a standing ovation, delivered essentially the same speech he has given for the last two days, attacking President Barack Obama on everything from his handling of the economy to his policies on energy, health care and education.
"The president has failed," Romney said.
He took specific aim at the Democratic Party's ties to labor unions, accusing Obama of putting union heads above the needs of the American people.
"That's where they get their money," Romney said. "And that's where they pay obedience."
He accused Obama of setting the country back on foreign policy, including in the Middle East where he said the president had jeopardized the U.S.'s relationship with Israel.
"We are not any closer to peace," Romney said.
Romney stayed away from hot-button issues in which he's come under fire from members of his party—including social issues like abortion.
Instead, he kept his focus squarely on Obama. He told the audience he had met Obama at a dinner in Washington, D.C., about "four or five years ago."
"I think he's a nice person," Romney said of Obama. "I just don't think we can afford him any longer."

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