President Obama presented himself as the champion of the Keystone pipeline in Cushing, Okla., saying that he’s making the southern leg from there to the Gulf of Mexico “a priority, and we’re going to go ahead and get that done.”
“The northern portion of it we’re going to have to review properly to make sure that the health and safety of the American people are protected,” he added. “That’s common sense.”
“The president so far has the Keystone pipeline exactly 29 percent right, but if he were serious about finding more North American oil and creating jobs, he would approve of building the remaining 71 percent of the pipeline so that Canada can sell its oil to the United States instead of China,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said in a response.
Obama panned the congressional push under which he nixed the original Keystone XL application.
“Unfortunately, Congress decided they wanted their own timeline — not the company, not the experts, but members of Congress who decided this might be a fun political issue, decided to try to intervene and make it impossible for us to make an informed decision,” the president said.
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