The U.S. House bill that would bypass the requirement for Presidential approval for the Keystone XL pipeline project will likely get no traction in the U.S. Senate.
First District Congressman David McKinley says he does not understand why.
“This bill is mirrored after what the Senate passed (earlier this year),” the Republican Congressman said. “If the Senate was willing to adopt something like this and the House has now adopted something like this, why is the President continuing to threaten to veto it?”
The legislation, the seventh such bill to get approval from the U.S. House in two years, would clear the way for an 875 mile section of the Keystone XL oil pipeline between Canada and Nebraska.
The White House has already approved the pipeline section from Oklahoma to Texas, but has twice stopped progress on the northern part of the pipeline because of environmental issues.
“It’s not something that we’re taking out of our own resources to ship or refine, this is an opportunity for us to bolster our relationship with Canada,” Congressman McKinley said.
TransCanada, which is based in Calgary, first proposed the $7 billion pipeline in 2008. It would move oil 1,700 miles from the tar sands of western Canada to oil refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast.
It would run through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and Montana to get to refineries in Texas.
Second District Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican, voted for the U.S. House bill this week while Third District Congressman Nick Rahall, a Democrat, voted against it.