It's always fun when it's Republicans who get bit on the ass with unintended consequences. Their insistence on the Keystone XL rider to the payroll tax cut extension legislation in December might end up
slowing down the review because it's creating confusion for one of the key states.
When President Obama signed legislation to extend the payroll tax cut on Dec. 23, he also enacted an amendment, introduced by GOP members of Congress, requiring him to approve or deny the pipeline project within 60 days, or by Feb. 21.
But Nebraska's Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), which is trying to reroute the pipeline around Nebraska's sensitive Sandhills, said it will take at least six months to choose and approve the new route.
A spokeswoman from the State Department—the federal agency in charge of the Keystone XL review—declined to discuss how the administration will deal with the conflict between those two dates. But interviews with spokesmen for the DEQ and TransCanada, the company that wants to build the pipeline, indicate that the federal legislation could inadvertently slow the reroute process.
Before work on the reroute can fully proceed, the DEQ and TransCanada said they need a memorandum from the State Department outlining the agency's involvement in the process.
The State Department spokeswoman said the agency is "currently analyzing the Keystone XL provisions in the ... Temporary Payroll Tax Cut Continuation Act" and declined to comment on the memorandum's progress.
"I can't even confirm that there is a memo," she said.
TransCanada needs to resurvey for the reroute, but can't do it without the State Department which the State Department won't do because they're reviewing their obligations under the new legislation. Then Nebraska's DEQ has to have the information from the new TransCanada survey to proceed with a supplemental environmental impact statement for the new proposed route, which is likely to go through more populated areas of the state and be just as unpopular with the state's residents and politicians as the current route.
Bottom line, the State Department's warning that this arbitrary deadline from Congress would mean that "the Department would be unable to make a determination to issue a permit for this project" wasn't an empty threat.