WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday voted overwhelmingly 252-161 to authorize the immediate construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
The U.S. Senate will debate the measure on Tuesday and might vote that same day. It is uncertain if Keystone can get the 60 votes to avoid a filibuster.
In many ways, the House and Senate votes are political stunts designed to help either Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu or Republican opponent Rep. Bill Cassidy win a senate runoff vote in Louisiana Dec. 6.
The two candidates sponsored the bills in their respective Houses of Congress — despite the fact that the House has voted on the issue eight previous times.
The Keystone pipeline, which would transport about 830,000 barrels of bitumen and crude oil from Alberta’s oilsands and the Bakken field in North Dakota to Gulf Coast refineries, has become a jobs-creation issue in Louisiana.
The state department has been studying the pipeline for six years and the final decision rests with U.S. President Barack Obama. He has not said whether he will veto the Keystone bill if it reaches his desk.
Debate in the House Thursday drew a stark line between lawmakers who support the pipeline as a job creation and energy security project and those who oppose it because they say it will intensify climate change by allowing the expansion of the oilsands and therefore more greenhouse gases.
Both sides accused the other of political grandstanding for the Louisiana senate seat by proposing the bills in the first place.
“This is nothing but bare-naked politics,” Democrat Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon said on the House floor, adding that the bill should never have been brought to the house.
Republican Rep. Mike Kelly countered that the Keystone bill is a “jobs bill about creating tens of thousands of jobs for hard-working Americans and one job in the senate” for Mary Landrieu.
He noted that the senate never took previous House bills.
“Now miraculously the senate is entertaining this because of one job,” he said. “The tens of thousands of jobs of all these Americans you have turned a deaf ear and blind eye to are now being answered by the senate because of one job, one senator who has the possibility of losing her seat because of the Keystone pipeline not being able to go to the senate. Isn’t it ironic?”
Speaking for environmentalists, Rep. Jared Huffman, a Democrat from California, said the bill was a “Christmas gift” to TransCanada Corp., owner of the Keystone pipeline project.
“So Merry Christmas, TransCanada,” he said on the House floor. “And what gift can we expect in return? Carbon pollution and heavy crude shipped through our country to export terminals and higher gas prices. … This Christmas present to TransCanada is like a lump of coal to the U.S.”
TransCanada issued a statement saying that Keystone has strong bipartisan support.
“We are encouraged by any effort to move this process forward,” the statement said.
“This is about a pipeline and whether or not it is needed and in America’s national interest. American refineries need the oil that we will transport — from both Canadian and American oil fields — to create products that we all rely on.”
The Friends of the Earth issued a statement claiming the House vote was “to repay the Koch brothers and other oil profiteers for the millions they invested in the mid-term elections.”
“The vote supported a destructive project with no redeeming value for anyone other than TransCanada,” the environment group states. “Yet even after the vote, the decision over the Keystone XL pipeline remains with President Obama. The movement that has built-in opposition to the pipeline remains dedicated to ensuring that it never becomes a reality.”
wmarsden@postmedia.com
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