Louisiana’s junior U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy says Obama “rejected more than 40,000 direct and indirect jobs” he believes the project would have created.
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“This is all environmental politics”, says Oppenheimer energy analyst Fadel Gheit.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also said he was “disappointed” by the decision but respects the right of the U.S.to make the decision.
Republicans seeking the White House in the November 2016 presidential election quickly voiced their disagreement.
The move, which is sure to anger congressional Republicans, the oil industry and a few Democratic backers of the pipeline, drew immediate praise from environmentalists.
The pipeline was proposed to run 1,179 miles from the Western Canadian oil sands in Alberta to refineries in Texas.
Supporters of the project said it would have created jobs and strengthened North America’s energy security.
“Paving the way for something like the Keystone Pipeline would be a step backward, and I’m glad to see that President Obama and Secretary Kerry today are rejecting the Keystone permits”, he said.
“This was another step in making America more energy independent and had the support of more than 60 percent of Americans”.
JUDY WOODRUFF: President Obama had faced considerable pressure from the left to act, while he kept his own opinion under wraps.
“There are 10 more projects at the Department of State and we need timely decisions on these projects”.
TransCanada President and CEO Ross Girling said in a statement the company was disappointed by the decision.
Mark Jaccard, an energy economist at Simon Fraser University, said it was the previous Conservative government’s slowness on climate change that pushed Obama to reject Keystone XL.
“Just a few years ago, insiders and experts wrote us off and assured the world Keystone XL would be built by the end of 2011”, adds 350.org executive director May Boeve.
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Alberta official Opposition Wildrose Party Leader Brian Jean called the US decision “deeply disappointing”. And frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership.
