President Barack Obama rejected a permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline on Friday, handing a major victory to green activists in the defining environmental controversy of his tenure, arguing that approving the project would undercut the United States’ status as a leader in fighting climate change.
The pipeline “would not make a meaningful contribution to our economy,” Obama said, dismissing claims that the pipeline would boost job creation. If Congress is serious about creating jobs, lawmakers should pass a bipartisan infrastructure plan “that in the short term could create more than 30 times as many jobs per year as the pipeline would,” Obama said.

Obama also said Keystone would not lower gas prices for American consumers, since the average price of gas has fallen about 77 cents over a year ago, or ensure future energy supplies.
«Shipping dirtier crude oil into our country would not increase America’s energy security,» Obama said. «What has increased America’s energy security is our strategy over the past several years to reduce our reliance on dirty fossil fuels from unstable parts of the world.”
“America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change,” Obama said. “And frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership.”
The long-awaited decision is a huge loss for the oil industry, the Canadian government and Republicans in Congress, although GOP lawmakers have vowed to continue trying to force approval of Keystone using must-pass legislation. Obama acted just days after his administration rejected developer TransCanada’s request for a pause in its review of the project, a move that could have pushed the decision into the next presidency.
In a statement, newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government was disappointed by the rejection, though he played down the dispute that had soured the cross-border relationship under his predecessor, Stephen Harper.
“The Canada-U.S. relationship is much bigger than any one project and I look forward to a fresh start with President Obama to strengthen our remarkable ties in a spirit of friendship and co-operation,» he said.
Obama’s decision promises to put new pressure on Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. Her long-delayed declaration just two months ago that she too opposes the $8 billion, 1,179-mile project has inspired her more left-leaning primary opponents to accuse her of flip-flopping.
The Republican presidential candidates quickly pounced on Obama’s announcement. Sen. Marco Rubio denounced it at a “huge mistake,” while former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush described it as a ”self-inflicted attack on the U.S. economy and jobs.» Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal accused Obama of “bowing to radical environmentalists and snubbing thousands of high quality, high paying energy sector jobs,” and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said the president “has lost his mind.”
Whether Keystone remains a political albatross on Capitol Hill depends partly on factors outside Obama’s control, including the historic plunge in global oil prices that has diminished the U.S. oil industry’s appetite for Canadian crude. The seven-plus years it has taken for the administration to weigh the fate of the project succeeded in shunting the pipeline’s day of reckoning past a series of political landmines, including Obama’s reelection, last fall’s midterms and last month’s electoral defeat of Canada’s Harper.
Still, the verdict from Obama puts to rest years of tea-leaf-reading and dropped hints about the president’s leanings on the Canada-to-Texas pipeline. It arrived nine months after Obama vetoed a GOP-backed bill that would have approved the pipeline by congressional fiat, and followed repeated comments in which he scoffed at supporters’ predictions that the pipeline would be a major job-creator.
Even the timing of the administration’s verdict remained a mystery this summer and fall as the State Department became consumed by a historic nuclear pact with Iran. That deal’s sensitivity suggested to Keystone’s friends and foes alike that Obama would wait to decide on the pipeline until later in the year, when Clinton’s White House run would be in full swing.
Both sides in the prolonged pipeline battle have vowed to press their case in court if they fell short, but the legal jockeying over the Keystone decision may prove short-lived. The 2004 executive order that gives the White House ultimate sway over cross-border energy projects like Keystone allows Obama significant discretion to determine whether any project is in the “national interest,” a test that includes the pipeline’s economic and geopolitical ramifications as well as environmental effects.
Yet it is Keystone’s climate impact that propelled the once-obscure pipeline to international prominence as environmental activists turned the Canadian oil sands into an emblem of “dirty” energy unfit for a president determined to craft a global deal on global warming this December.
The nuances of Keystone’s climate symbolism have put every Democrat involved into a political bind at one point or another — from Obama to Kerry to Clinton to billionaire donor Tom Steyer, who opposes the pipeline but has sometimes steered money to Democratic candidates who refused to take a stand.
Steyer praised Obama’s move, telling POLITICO that he thought «the president, always, in his heart was here.»
And Bill McKibben, the 350.org co-founder who led climate activists’ fight against the pipeline, said the Keystone rejection gives Obama «new stature as an environmental leader.»
Greens are «well aware that the next president could undo all this, but this is a day of celebration,» he added in a statement.

Obama rejects Keystone XL pipeline

ELANA SCHOR

Politico   November 6, 2015