Bill intended to force construction of Keystone XL pipeline fails to advance in U.S. Senate

By the tight­est of mar­gins, the U.S. Sen­ate this evening defeat­ed a poor­ly con­ceived bill intend­ed to give oil giant Tran­sCana­da a green light to build its pro­posed Key­stone XL pipeline through Mon­tana, the Dako­tas, and Nebraska.

S.2280, prime spon­sored by Repub­li­can John Hoeven of North Dako­ta and pro­mot­ed by an increas­ing­ly des­per­ate Mary Lan­drieu of Louisiana since Elec­tion Night two weeks ago, need­ed six­ty votes to pass. It received fifty-nine.

Thir­ty-nine Democ­rats and two inde­pen­dents who cau­cus with Sen­ate Democ­rats (Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Ver­mont) coura­geous­ly stood up to the dirty fos­sil fuels indus­try and vot­ed no on the bill, leav­ing Sen­ate Repub­li­cans and the oil wing of the Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus one vote short of victory.

The oppo­si­tion to S.2280 was led by Bar­bara Box­er of Cal­i­for­nia, who thor­ough­ly debunked Repub­li­can claims about the pro­posed pipeline. (Repub­li­cans false­ly say the pipeline will cre­ate a lot of jobs… they’ve increas­ing­ly shied away from say­ing how many… and that it would not harm the environment.)

The Pacif­ic North­west­’s del­e­ga­tion split along ide­o­log­i­cal lines rather than par­ty lines. This was the roll call vote from our region:

Vot­ing Aye: Democ­rats John Walsh and Jon Tester (MT), Mark Begich (AK); Repub­li­cans Mark Crapo and Jim Risch (ID), Lisa Murkows­ki (AK)

Vot­ing Nay: Democ­rats Pat­ty Mur­ray and Maria Cantwell (WA), Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley (OR)

Aside from Begich, Walsh, and Tester, the Democ­rats who broke with the rest of their cau­cus to sup­port the bill were:

• Mary Lan­drieu, Louisana
• Michael Ben­net, Colorado
• Tom Carp­er, Delaware
• Bob Casey, Pennsylvania
• Joe Don­nel­ly, Indiana
• Kay Hagan, North Carolina
• Hei­di Heitkamp, North Dakota
• Joe Manchin, West Virginia
• Claire McCaskill, Missouri
• Mark Pry­or, Arkansas
• Mark Warn­er, Virginia

Hagan and Pry­or will not be return­ing to the U.S. Sen­ate for the 114th Congress.

Lan­drieu had hoped that Angus King of Maine might be the six­ti­eth vote for the leg­is­la­tion, but he announced a few hours ago he would not sup­port the bill.

“Con­gress is not — nor should it be — in the busi­ness of leg­is­lat­ing the approval or dis­ap­proval of a con­struc­tion project,” King said in a press release.

“And while I am frus­trat­ed that the Pres­i­dent has refused to make a deci­sion on the future of the pipeline, I don’t believe that short-cir­cuit­ing the process to cir­cum­vent his Admin­is­tra­tion is in the best inter­est of the Amer­i­can peo­ple. I urge the Pres­i­dent to make a deci­sion soon, and, if he does­n’t, I look for­ward to work­ing with Con­gress to put a time­frame on this decision.”

Lan­drieu had pre­vi­ous­ly told reporters that she was con­fi­dent she had six­ty votes, say­ing “I feel com­fort­able.” Thank­ful­ly, it turned out she did­n’t real­ly have sixty.

S.2280 is appro­pri­ate­ly titled “a bill to approve the Key­stone XL pipeline.” That’s tru­ly all it is: a shame­ful, bla­tant attempt to do a big oil com­pa­ny’s bid­ding. The text of S.2280 con­sists of just a few pro­vi­sions. Here it is in its entirety:

Be it enact­ed by the Sen­ate and House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca in Con­gress assem­bled,

SECTION 1. KEYSTONE XL APPROVAL.

(a) In Gen­er­al- Tran­sCana­da Key­stone Pipeline, L.P. may con­struct, con­nect, oper­ate, and main­tain the pipeline and cross-bor­der facil­i­ties described in the appli­ca­tion filed on May 4, 2012, by Tran­sCana­da Cor­po­ra­tion to the Depart­ment of State (includ­ing any sub­se­quent revi­sion to the pipeline route with­in the State of Nebras­ka required or autho­rized by the State of Nebraska).

(b) Envi­ron­men­tal Impact State­ment- The Final Sup­ple­men­tal Envi­ron­men­tal Impact State­ment issued by the Sec­re­tary of State in Jan­u­ary 2014, regard­ing the pipeline referred to in sub­sec­tion (a), and the envi­ron­men­tal analy­sis, con­sul­ta­tion, and review described in that doc­u­ment (includ­ing appen­dices) shall be con­sid­ered to ful­ly satisfy –

(1) all require­ments of the Nation­al Envi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq.); and

(2) any oth­er pro­vi­sion of law that requires Fed­er­al agency con­sul­ta­tion or review (includ­ing the con­sul­ta­tion or review required under sec­tion 7(a) of the Endan­gered Species Act of 1973 (16 U.S.C. 1536(a))) with respect to the pipeline and facil­i­ties referred to in sub­sec­tion (a).

(c) Per­mits- Any Fed­er­al per­mit or autho­riza­tion issued before the date of enact­ment of this Act for the pipeline and cross-bor­der facil­i­ties referred to in sub­sec­tion (a) shall remain in effect.

(d) Fed­er­al Judi­cial Review- Any legal chal­lenge to a Fed­er­al agency action regard­ing the pipeline and cross-bor­der facil­i­ties described in sub­sec­tion (a), and the relat­ed facil­i­ties in the Unit­ed States, that are approved by this Act, and any per­mit, right-of-way, or oth­er action tak­en to con­struct or com­plete the project pur­suant to Fed­er­al law, shall only be sub­ject to judi­cial review on direct appeal to the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Dis­trict of Colum­bia Circuit.

(e) Pri­vate Prop­er­ty Sav­ings Clause- Noth­ing in this Act alters any Fed­er­al, State, or local process or con­di­tion in effect on the date of enact­ment of this Act that is nec­es­sary to secure access from an own­er of pri­vate prop­er­ty to con­struct the pipeline and cross-bor­der facil­i­ties described in sub­sec­tion (a).

Aides to Barack Oba­ma had indi­cat­ed that he was pre­pared to veto S.2280 had it passed, but now it’s dead, so he won’t have to.

Repub­li­cans have promised to hold anoth­er vote on sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion in ear­ly 2015 once they con­trol the U.S. Sen­ate major­i­ty. And although a cou­ple of sen­a­tors who vot­ed against Key­stone XL today are depart­ing the Sen­ate (Mark Udall, Tim John­son), Repub­li­cans can’t nec­es­sar­i­ly count on Michael Ben­net and Tom Carp­er to remain votes for advanc­ing the pipeline — which means the next S.2280 may still not reach Oba­ma’s desk in the 114th Congress.

The votes already exist to do Tran­sCanada’s bid­ding in the House; the House vot­ed out a bill on Fri­day sim­i­lar to S.2280 with Mary Lan­drieu’s oppo­nen­t’s name on it. The Rose­bud Sioux Tribe of South Dako­ta, whose trib­al lands Tran­sCana­da intends to run Key­stone XL through, respond­ed to the vote forcefully.

“We are out­raged at the lack of inter­gov­ern­men­tal coop­er­a­tion,” trib­al pres­i­dent Cyril Scott said in a state­ment. “We are a sov­er­eign nation and we are not being treat­ed as such. We will close our reser­va­tion bor­ders to Key­stone XL. Autho­riz­ing Key­stone XL is an act of war against our people.”

It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to a lob­by as pow­er­ful as the oil indus­try. We are grate­ful to Trib­al Pres­i­dent Scott, activist leader Jane Kleeb, and all the oth­er good peo­ple orga­niz­ing to ensure this destruc­tive, dirty pipeline project nev­er gets built. It makes zero sense for the Unit­ed States to assume the risks for a high pol­lut­ing ener­gy project that will send dirty fuel abroad for oth­er nations to burn and gen­er­ate prof­its for a for­eign oil conglomerate.