So the ideas behind the act are agreeable but the wording isn’t just right? By blocking the initiative of the elected, Obama decided on the form and not substance. Because the project involves two States, Canada and the United States, the president believes that Congress exceeded its functions by trying to force his hand.
Keystone XL will have to wait again. As previously announced, the president of the United States, Barack Obama, Tuesday February 24th, has vetoed a text passed by Congress authorizing the construction of this pipeline which should allow the routing of fired oil from oil sands Alberta province of Canada, to the heart of the US oil industry in the Gulf of Mexico.
Canada is still on board. “We will continue to vigorously defend this job creation project”, for its part, said Canadian Minister of Natural Resources, Greg Rickford, saying that now was a debate “between the president and the people American, which supports the project. ”
In his letter to the Senate explaining his approach, the US president said that the Congress has tried, by this law, to circumvent and establish a long process decision. This is the third president’s veto since his arrival at the White House in 2008, but it should not be the last given the fact that the Republican Party now controls both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Officially, Obama expects the conclusions of the State Department and the implications to fall to the United States of this construction, the economy and the environment. Fired oil production from oil sands is more polluting than conventional oil production. The draft authorization of the Keystone XL pipeline between Canada and the US, opposed by environmentalists and threatened to veto by Barack Obama, was adopted in committee in the Senate Thursday preliminary to its adoption by Congress.
The spokesman of the White House, Josh Earnest, said Tuesday, February 24, during his press briefing that the president had not excluded validate the project if approved but gave no timetable. The White House is in a delicate position on this project. It is wedged between the voluntarism of the Canadian authorities, who have made the pipeline a sensitive issue of the bilateral relationship, that of the Republicans also support the project and supported by some Democrats elected, and the determination of non-governmental organizations and figures such as the philanthropist Tom Steyer. These have made Keystone symbol while a US blockade would not prevent the production of this oil.
They denounced on Tuesday and wrote it off as a “purely political” decision. “The veto of President Obama to the Keystone XL project will not prevent Congress to move forward on this project and create American jobs,” stated Sen. John McCain on Twitter. Was this a warning?
Reacting to Obama’s veto, TransCanada, the consortium bringing the project pipeline, posted its determination to continue to push the project. “Pipelines are by far the safest and most sensible means of transport from an environmental point of view to transport millions of barrels of oil that Americans consume every day,” the group said.