Congress has passed legislation requiring action on the Keystone XL pipeline in the next 60 days, but the State Department and the White House want more time to conduct environmental impact studies on the pipeline construction and routing.
“We want to get the appropriate environmental impact study of [the pipeline route] before we can make a national interest determination,” State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said yesterday when asked about the congressional legislation, noting also “that the presidential authority here has been delegated to the State Department.”
Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney affirmed the State Department’s earlier criticism “of short-circuiting an absolutely necessary process to properly and carefully review the alternate route or routes in Nebraska that need to be studied here.”
Nuland also raised the Nebraska issue, saying that “these grave environmental concerns came up in Nebraska, and Nebraskan citizens, including the Republican governor, urged us to look at an alternative route.
