Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.WASHINGTON — TransCanada has a new path through Nebraska drawn up for its controversial Keystone XL pipeline.
Actually, the company's had it for weeks.
TransCanada planned to share the new route with state officials Jan. 19, but the Obama administration officially rejected the project Jan. 18. The U.S. State Department, in rejecting the pipeline, said there wasn't enough time to finish reviewing the project before a Feb. 21 deadline imposed by Republicans in Congress.
TransCanada chose not to provide the new route to the state, saying the rejection had changed the process.
Gov. Dave Heineman disclosed the existence of the potential alternative route during an interview Thursday with The World-Herald, citing it as evidence that the pipeline is poised to move forward quickly once all of the procedural questions surrounding the project are worked out.
"They're ready to go," Heineman said of TransCanada.
TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard confirmed the existence of the alternative route but said it was much more of a work in progress than a finished product.
TransCanada was looking for feedback from state officials to see if the proposal raised any red flags, he said, before making an official submission.
Howard declined to provide a copy of the potential route.
Heineman said that although he hadn't seen the route in question, he has some idea where it would go.
"They understand, and there is no doubt it's going around the Sand Hills," Heineman said.
TransCanada had been working with Nebraska under legislation passed during last year's special legislative session to find a new route for the pipeline that would avoid the environmentally sensitive Sand Hills.
The idea was to have Nebraska conduct a supplemental environmental review of the new route under an agreement with the State Department, but the Obama administration's official rejection of the pipeline threw that into limbo.
"We are in a timeout and we don't know how long the timeout is going to last — 30 seconds, 2 minutes, two weeks, two months — as we try to determine how do we move forward," Heineman said.
Pipeline opponents have said the environmental review of the project must start over from scratch. TransCanada says it will submit a new application, with more than three years' worth of reviews already completed, to the State Department. The company believes the new application should receive expedited consideration.
New White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew recently called Heineman, chairman of the National Governors Association, to introduce himself, and the conversation quickly turned to the pipeline. Heineman said he expressed frustration with the State Department's lack of guidance.
Heineman said that since that conversation, he's received two calls from State Department officials who said that without a pending application, there's nothing for them to do.
Meanwhile, Republicans on Capitol Hill are looking to force approval of the pipeline through legislation.
U.S. Rep. Connie Mack, R-Fla., introduced the latest bill Thursday that would simply deem the project approved.
It's an alternative to legislation offered by Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., that is expected to get a vote in the House next week. Terry's bill would require the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to approve the project within 30 days. Both bills carve out exemptions for finding a new route through Nebraska.
Pipeline supporters say it's time to get the project going after extensive environmental studies.
On Thursday, the State Department's internal watchdog cleared the agency of any impropriety in its review of the pipeline in a report released to Congress.
The department's inspector general said it found no evidence that State Department employees were improperly influenced by TransCanada when they selected a third-party contractor to conduct the environmental analysis, as opponents of the project had charged.
The inspector general also concluded that no conflicts of interest existed between that contractor, Cardno Entrix, and the State Department, TransCanada and other federal agencies the company had worked for.
While the report cleared the department of wrongdoing, pipeline opponents were quick to point out findings that said a lack of expertise and resources at the State Department affected the environmental review.
In addition, the inspector general found that neither TransCanada nor the department reviewed Cardno Entrix's conflict of interest statements, an oversight the State Department officials said would be corrected.
This report includes material from the Associated Press.
Contact the writer:
202-630-4823, joe.morton@owh.com
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