The company that wants to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline asked the U.S. government on Monday to suspend review of its permit, kicking final approval to the next administration.
The project has been under review at President Obama’s State Department for seven years, and has become a political football between Republicans and Democrats. Obama was widely expected to reject it.
Russ Girling, TransCanada’s president and chief executive officer, sent a letter to the Secretary of State John Kerry asking the agency to put its permit review on hold, telling Kerry that the company will pursue approval of the project at the state level in Nebraska.
The proposed route for the pipeline through Nebraska had been challenged in court several years ago, during which time the Obama administration said it would suspend approval of the project until the challenge had been resolved. The Nebraska Supreme Court in January overturned a lower court ruling that struck down the route.
But recently, TransCanada said it would work with the state’s Public Service Commission on the route, thinking it would expedite final approval.
“We are asking State [Department] to pause its review of Keystone XL based on the fact that we have applied to the Nebraska Public Service Commission for approval of its preferred route in the state,” Girling wrote in the letter.
“I note that when the status of the Nebraska pipeline route was challenged last year, the State Department found it appropriate to suspend its review until that dispute was resolved. We feel under the current circumstances a similar suspension would be appropriate.”
The 1,200-mile pipeline would deliver crude oil from the Alberta tar sands to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast. Environmentalists have been fighting it vehemently saying that bringing oil out of the Alberta tar sands would increase the greenhouse gas emissions that many scientists blame for driving man-made climate change.
