The Obama administration on Tuesday said it will continue to process TransCanada's application for a permit to build the Keystone XL pipeline, even as it considers the company's request to suspend the review.
"We would like to finish this review process as swiftly as possible," Department of State spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said in a briefing with reporters. "We will issue a response [to TransCanada], but we're going to continue our review process."
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, saying he found TransCanada's request "unusual," said President Barack Obama still intends to rule on the presidential permit before he leaves office in January 2017.
"There's no doubt that this debate has been heavily influenced by politics, and the president is doing his best to try to shield the actual process that will consider the merits of the project from those politics," Earnest said in a briefing.
TransCanada late Monday sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry asking that he freeze the review of the Keystone XL pipeline while the Nebraska Public Service Commission mulls a decision on the pipeline's route through that state, which could take up to a year.
Critics of the project say the company appears to be attempting to push the presidential permit decision to the next administration, in hopes of a friendlier president, a charge TransCanada has denied.
Obama has frequently cast doubt on the project's job-creation potential touted by its supporters, who have said the pipeline would boost US energy security.
The pipeline, designed to carry up to 830,000 b/d of heavy Western Canadian crude and light sweet Bakken to the US Gulf Coast, requires a Department of State determination of national interest and a presidential permit because it crosses a US border.
The project has faced more than seven years of bureaucratic and legal delays and has emerged as a flashpoint between environmentalists opposed to further oil development and advocates of energy production.
Environmentalists have rallied against the pipeline, saying it would increase development of Canada's energy-intensive oil sands and endanger sensitive aquifers and waterways along the pipeline's route.
If built, the 1,700-mile pipeline would take crude from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Nebraska, where it would connect to an already-built segment that would transport the oil to the US Gulf Coast refining center.
Canadian oil sands producers for years have bemoaned the lack of pipeline takeaway capacity that has caused Western Canadian Select to trade at a major discount. Platts assessed WCS in Hardisty, Alberta, at WTI minus $15.20/b Monday.
TransCanada spokesman Mark Cooper said the company remains committed to building the pipeline, adding that construction could begin very soon after a presidential permit is issued, with first flows to begin two years after that.
"It's supported strongly by our shippers as the most efficient, safest, least greenhouse-gas-intensive way to transport needed oil," Cooper said. "We remain unwavering in our commitment to the Keystone XL."
