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 White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said Obama would decide
once the Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Department and
other federal experts offer their assessments of the State
Department review, as well as their own analysis.
But McDonough offered no word how soon Obama may rule.
Pressure on Obama to approve the project mounted on Friday with the
release of the State Department report, which concluded the
pipeline's impact on climate change would not be significant.
Backers argue that the State Department's findings should clear the
way for prompt approval of a bid by TransCanada Corp to build the
$5.4 billion project, which would transport crude from Alberta's oil
sands to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press" and CBS's "Face the Nation,"
McDonough said the president's top concern remains the environment,
not election-year politics.
The State Department report riled environmentalists, many of whom
are part of Obama's liberal base. Yet it delighted the project's
backers who include congressional Republicans as well as some of
Obama's Democrats up for reelection this November.
McDonough called the State Department review "one of many important
inputs into the process." "What the president's role is now is to
protect this process from politics, let the experts, the expert
agencies and the cabinet secretaries make their assessments both of
the study that was put in on Friday as well as its impact on the
national interest," McDonough said.
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"So we'll resolve that over the coming period of time," McDonough
said.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, a Republican and an outspoken
proponent of the project, told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday
there was no reason for Obama to oppose the project "unless it's
just purely ideological."
"This goes to an absolutely critical issue, cheap, affordable
domestic energy (which) is an absolute critical component for us
reviving our manufacturing-based economy," Jindal said.
"This is a no-brainer," the governor said.
(Reporting by Thomas Ferraro and Sandra Maler;
editing by Nick Zieminski)
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