Keystone XL Pipeline Decision Back in Obama’s Lap

A truck traveling along highway 14, several miles north of Neligh, Neb., near the proposed new route for the Keystone XL pipeline, on April 19, 2012. A bill to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline cleared a key Senate committee Thursday, setting up a fight next week pitting newly empowered Republicans against President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee moved the bill closer to the floor by a 13-9 vote. Sen Joe Manchin of West Virginia, one of six Democrats sponsoring the bill, was the only Democrat to support it in committee. The House will vote on its version of the bill Friday, and is expected to pass it easily. AP Photo/Nati Harnik

WASHINGTON—Congressional Republicans and Nebraska’s Supreme Court have shipped the Keystone XL oil pipeline project right back to a reluctant President Barack Obama.

Obama is so loath to make the call that deliberations have entered their sixth year, nearly as long as he has held office.

He has blamed the delays on bureaucratic formalities and parochial issues in Nebraska, even when skeptics claimed that the politics of Obama’s re-election race in 2012 were a more accurate explanation.

That campaign is past, the Nebraska issue is settled and a bipartisan bill forcing the pipeline’s approval may soon reach Obama. Those on opposite sides of the debate just want the president to decide.

“It’s time for the State Department and the president to make a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline — however they decide — because six years is beyond long enough,” said Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, among the Democrats supporting the pipeline.

In April, just as the State Department’s review was nearing an end, Obama suspended it. The department has jurisdiction because the pipeline would start in Canada.

The Nebraska Supreme Court tossed out the lawsuit, clearing the way for the pipeline to snake through Nebraska as previously envisioned.