U.S. House Chairman Doubts Congress Will Force Obama Hand on Keystone

Platts – One of the leading House advocates of legislation to force President Barack Obama’s hand on the Keystone XL pipeline said Sunday on Platts Energy Week he doubts the Senate will follow through on such action.

Rep. Fred Upton, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in an interview on the all-energy news and talk show program that he thinks Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will restrict any vote in that chamber to a non-binding resolution rather than a bill requiring Obama to approve the controversial oil pipeline from Canada.

“I’m not very optimistic about the Senate doing something binding to get this thing done,” the Michigan Republican said. “The president has delayed this now for more than five years; it will be six years coming up this fall.”

Last week, Reid signaled to reporters that he would consider allowing a vote on Keystone, largely to facilitate corresponding action on a popular bill promoting energy efficiency. Democratic senators running in Republican-leading states, like Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, have demanded that Reid allow the Senate to take up a binding Keystone bill.

Landrieu and other supporters of Keystone legislation need 60 votes to pass the measure, and 67 votes to overcome a veto by Obama, which is considered likely if Congress sends such a measure to his desk.

Pro-Keystone senators have been increasing pressure on Reid for a vote since the Obama administration announced on Good Friday that it would again delay a decision on the project to carry crude oil from Alberta’s oil sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

The Senate last year passed a non-binding amendment in favor of Keystone as part of the chamber’s budget legislation, with 62 votes supporting it.

“I don’t believe Majority Leader Reid will allow a binding vote to get it done, knowing it would likely pass,” Upton said. “I think he’ll take a different route so that it will be in essence a meaningless sense of the Senate resolution, which is not binding.”

Separately, Upton said a bill requiring the U.S. Department of Energy to expedite its decisions on applications to export liquefied natural gas would send a signal to central Europe that the U.S. is willing to help nations wean themselves from Russian natural gas.

“They’re looking for help. They’re looking for a lifeline,” Upton said of Ukraine and other European nations, whose reliance on Russia for gas has become a bigger concern since the crisis over Ukraine began this year. “In the meantime, nearly two dozen applications are sitting at the Department of Energy waiting for approval.”

Upton said the House is not likely to vote on the bill (H.R. 6) for “a number of weeks,” at a minimum. In the meantime, he said, he would work to generate more bipartisan support for the measure, which passed his committee by a vote of 33-18.

Among other issues, Upton said he believes the House could potentially approve the pending energy-efficiency bill in the Senate, which is cosponsored by Sens. Jean Shaheen, Democrat-New Hampshire, and Rob Portman, Republican-Ohio.

Upton said the House has already passed several smaller bills containing many of the same provisions as the Shaheen-Portman bill.

In addition, the House chairman said his committee would likely vote within days on legislation to streamline the approval process for energy infrastructure projects that cross U.S. borders. Upton and Representative Gene Green, Democrat-Texas, are the cosponsors of the bill.

Upton said the Keystone XL pipeline is not among the infrastructure projects that would benefit from the bill.

“We’ve made a point to say this does not apply to Keystone,” he said. “We’ve had that debate. We know where the votes are.”

Also on Sunday’s program, Alan Dunn, a former U.S. assistant secretary of commerce and longtime international trade lawyer, discussed how the latest round of U.S. sanctions, aimed at Russian individuals and companies with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, are impacting Russia’s energy sector.

In another segment, Brenda Shaffer, a visiting researcher at Georgetown University’s Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies, discussed how countries like Azerbaijan could ease Europe’s energy woes.

During Sunday’s “Market Spotlight” segment, Platts Senior Editor Jim Ostroff discussed how falling U.S. uranium prices are affecting the nuclear power market.