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 TransCanada has waited more than six years for the Obama
administration to make a decision on the line, which would take as
much as 830,000 barrels per day of Alberta tar sands crude to
refineries on Texas' Gulf Coast.
The State Department is now awaiting the results of a court
challenge on the line's routing through Nebraska and completing its
own study on the need for the line before it makes a final
recommendation to President Barack Obama on whether to grant the
project a presidential permit. The permit would allow the line,
which faces criticism from environmentalists, to cross from Canada
into the United States.
 While Kerry said he would like a quick decision on the project, he
gave no hint as to when that would come.
"I certainly want to do it sooner rather than later but I can't tell
you the precise date," Kerry told a joint news conference with
Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird.
[to top of second column] |
The delay has pushed up the cost of the line, which would run from
Hardisty, Alberta, to near Houston. The company said last month that
Keystone XL's original $5.4 billion estimate is likely half of what
it will now cost to build the pipeline.
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Randall Palmer; Additional
reporting by Scott Haggett in Calgary; Editing by Sandra Maler, Bill
Trott and Tom Brown)
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