Reid says he’d allow Keystone pipeline vote

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday that he’s fine with allowing a vote on a Republican amendment to transportation legislation that would approve the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline.

But the majority leader also suggested the decision on allowing a vote is tethered to the wider dispute over the transportation package.

He bristled at what he called GOP demands for votes on several other amendments to the bill, which stalled earlier in the day on the Senate floor.

“If it were only that, that would be easy, but it’s not only that,” Reid told reporters in the Capitol when asked about the GOP leadership-backed amendment to green-light the Alberta-to-Texas pipeline. “There are a lot of other totally unrelated matters.”

“If it were the only totally non-relevant, non-germane amendment, that would be fine . . . but they have got lots of them,” Reid said.

Sens. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and David Vitter (R-La.) want to amend the sweeping transportation funding bill with a measure that authorizes TransCanada Corp. to build Keystone, which would bring oil from Alberta’s massive tar sands projects to Gulf Coast refineries.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that lawmakers are close to an agreement on which amendments to the transportation bill will be considered. Click here for more on the wrangling over the transportation bill.

The Obama administration in January rejected a cross-border permit for the Keystone XL project, but President Obama emphasized that the decision was not on the “merits.”

He instead objected to a permit decision deadline that Republicans demanded, alleging it would short-circuit review.

TransCanada plans to reapply for the cross-border permit and is also, with the White House’s blessing, planning to proceed with a portion of the project to bring U.S. oil from Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast.

Advocates of the broader Keystone project – which include powerful industry groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute – say it would boost U.S. energy security and create thousands of jobs.

Environmental groups bitterly oppose the project due to greenhouse gas emissions from extracting and burning oil sands, forest damage from the projects, and fears of spills along the pipeline route.