Bad Policy

The administration’s “statements do not suggest that as a matter of substance it would be good energy policy” to reject the proposed 875-mile (1,408 kilometer) U.S. portion of the pipeline, said Michael Levi, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow in New York and author of the book “The Power Surge.”

Two-thirds of Americans favor building the pipeline, which would run from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, according to a Pew Research Center survey last month. While support for the pipeline was strongest among Republicans, 54 percent of Democrats also back it.

Democratic senators up for re-election in 2014 from oil- dependent states such as Alaska, Louisiana and Montana all voted in favor of a budget amendment supporting the pipeline. The House of Representatives is pushing a measure to allow Keystone’s construction without approval by the administration.

And Canadian officials are increasingly pressing U.S. policy makers to back the project.

“The challenge we face in the United States is to better inform the American public,” Peter Kent, Canada’s environment minister, said in Washington on April 10, as he decried the “very well-funded anti-Keystone lobby.”

Two former U.S. ambassadors to Canada, Gordon Giffin, who served under President Bill Clinton, and David Wilkins, who served under President George W. Bush, said Obama must weigh the diplomatic considerations as well as the project’s energy and economic benefits.

“This is of extraordinarily strong importance to Canada -- to the Canadian government, the Canadian economy, how Canadians look at us,” said Giffin, a lawyer now advising TransCanada, a Calgary-based company whose stock has risen almost 14 percent in the last year. “It would have serious implications on Canada’s view of the manner in which we deal with our partners.”

Initial Rejection

Obama rejected TransCanada’s initial permit application in January 2012, inviting the company to reapply with a route that didn’t cross an ecologically sensitive area of Nebraska. He told Republican senators last month he plans to make a decision on the company’s revised application by the end of this year.