Senate rejects Keystone XL pipeline

The 59-41 rejection was a defeat for Landrieu, who faces stiff odds in her runoff against GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy, the lead sponsor on the House-passed version of the bill. The incumbent Democrat and outgoing Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairwoman due to GOP taking the Senate had staked much of her campaign on her congressional clout, but wasn’t able to convince enough of her caucus to join her on the vote.

“There is no blame. There is only joy in the fight,” Landrieu said of not enough of her own caucus backing her bill at a news conference following the 59-41 vote.

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‬ Landrieu, who had said late Monday that she had the 60 votes needed to pass the bill, explained that at the time she was “fairly confident … because I arrived here with 14 votes and felt relatively certain that the coalition that was put together was strong enough to find the extra one. I’d say we have to work that muscle a little more.” She and other Keystone XL supporters made last-minute appeals during a weekly caucus meeting Tuesday, but to no avail.

But legislation to approve the Canada-to-Texas project, which has been under federal review for more than six years, is expected to come up again in a matter of weeks when Republicans take control of Congress. Such a bill would have a filibuster-proof majority and would likely be shy a handful of votes from overriding a potential presidential veto.

“A new majority is committed to acting next year,” incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday on the Senate floor.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, the next Energy and Natural Resources chairwoman, echoed those comments in a press conference after the vote, saying, “We will see that early in the next Congress.”

President Obama likely would veto such a Keystone XL bill in the next Congress. He has hinted strongly that he would veto any bill that circumvents the federal review, as the White House has threatened in the past.

“We’re going to let the process play itself out. And the determination will be made in the first instance by the secretary of state,” Obama, who has taken shots at the project because it would support 35 permanent jobs at the end of construction, said Monday at the G-20 summit in Brisbane, Australia.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest added Tuesday afternoon that the measure that failed was “certainly … a piece of legislation that the president doesn’t support because the president believes that this is something that should be determined through the State Department and the regular process that is in place to evaluate projects like this.”

Republicans, though, are hoping the new congressional calculus might change Obama’s approach next year.

Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., who was the lead Republican sponsor on the Keystone XL bill, said he thinks Obama could sign legislation approving the pipeline if it’s included in a broader energy or spending bill. If Obama doesn’t OK such legislation, Hoeven said he thinks the Senate would have 67 votes to override a veto.

“I can name probably four or five people that I’ve had discussions with on different options — but then I don’t want to do that because then you guys will go to them,” Hoeven told reporters. “But I can tell you there is a lot of interest on both sides of the aisle in working on something that would include some other legislation.”

Others have suggested he could simply not sign a Keystone XL bill, giving it the force of law after 10 days, or that he could OK the TransCanada Corp. project as an olive branch to the new GOP-led legislature.

“I frankly look for the Keystone [XL] pipeline to be approved,” Bennett Johnston, a former Democratic senator from Louisiana who now lobbies on energy issues, recently told the Washington Examiner.

Secretary of State John Kerry said he wanted to decide on Keystone XL “sooner rather than later” during an October meeting with Canadian counterpart John Baird, which Johnston said was a “clear signal.”

Still, other issues are blocking Keystone XL. The Nebraska Supreme Court hasn’t ruled on the constitutionality of a new route for the TransCanada Corp. project, which would send the carbon-dense oil sands from Alberta to the Gulf Coast refineries.

“On Keystone XL there is obviously politically a great desire … But let’s not forget that we have the Nebraska Supreme Court,” Karen Harbert, president of the Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, said in a recent interview. “That will materially affect [Republicans’] calculation.”

Republicans and centrist Democrats, backed by a number of business groups and labor unions, say the pipeline would bolster energy security by bringing in carbon-dense oil sands from Canada, in turn displacing imports from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. They also note that the State Department has said it will create 42,100 construction jobs during a two-year period.

State has noted that oil sands produce 17 percent more greenhouse gas emissions, which are blamed for driving climate change, than conventional oil. Environmentalists key to Obama’s base, backed by Democratic allies in Congress, have pushed the president to scrap the pipeline over concerns that the project would speed up the growth of oil sands production, which they say would contribute to climate change.

“It’s clear that building the pipeline will be a huge massive additional amount of tar sands coming out,” League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski told reporters recently in the Capitol. “That’s why we oppose it.”

The State Department said in its January 2013 final environmental impact statement that building the pipeline didn’t pose a significant risk to the climate because the oil sands would get to market by railcar or other pipelines, which has largely already started happening.

The agency did acknowledge, however, that Keystone XL “would contribute to cumulative global [greenhouse gas] emissions,” which environmentalists said should compel Obama to reject the pipeline to keep with his June 2013 pledge to kill the project if it “significantly exacerbates the problem of carbon pollution.”