The State Department said Wednesday that it has rejected a request from TransCanada to “pause” its review of the Keystone XL pipeline.
The Canadian company asked State this week to pause the review while it explores whether it can win approval from the state of Nebraska for the portion of the pipeline in that state. But spokesman John Kirby said State faced no legal requirement to pause the review, and would continue it.
“We have communicated our decision to continue our review, we have communicated that to TransCanada in writing today,” Kirby said.
“We’re not required to pause it based on an applicant’s request, there’s no legal basis to do that,” he added. “There’s no legal requirement to do that.”
When asked why State would continue the review at all, Kirby said only that “a lot of interagency work has gone into this.”
“There’s no obligation to pause,” he said. “A lot of work has gone into this to date, and the secretary wants that work to continue.”
State’s decision led to instant speculation that the Obama administration, which seems to clearly oppose the pipeline given its seven-year “review” of the project without any approval, will look to shoot down the project by continuing the review, and coming out against it. But Kirby dodged questions about whether that was the case.
“I won’t get ahead of decisions or determinations that haven’t been made yet,” he said. “I certainly can’t speak for the motivations of TransCanada and their request to pause. They should speak to that.”
“It is clearly … premature to get ahead of any determination that the secretary has or hasn’t made yet,” he said.
“He’s very comfortable in our decision to not pause this process as it has reached this mature phase,” he said of Secretary of State John Kerry.
