03.01.13

Hoeven Statement on Today's State Dept. Release of its 4th Environmental Review of the Keystone XL Project

WASHINGTON – Senator John Hoeven today issued the following statement in response to the U.S. State Department’s release of its second Keystone XL supplemental environmental impact statement (EIS), which represents the project’s fourth environmental review, including a Final EIS in August of 2011.

“After four and a half years, and a total of four environmental reviews, the Keystone XL pipeline project is perhaps the most thoroughly studied and long-delayed project of its kind in U.S. history. The State Department’s favorable finding of 'no significant impacts' on the environment in this, its most recent report, underscores both the good environmental stewardship of the project and the need to begin construction without further delay.

“But the State Department now indicates that it will hold a 45 day public comment period and an as yet undetermined period of time before it will issue its Final EIS and conduct an interagency comment period to make a national interest determination.

"While we welcome a finding of no significant impact, yet another indeterminate delay runs counter to both public opinion and reasonable due diligence. After nearly five years of review, and a favorable supplemental study, the president needs to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. We again ask, as we have before, that President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry provide us with an actual timeline and some certainty as to when this long delayed project will finally get a decision."

"The Keystone XL project will provide tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue to help us reduce our deficit and debt, and it will do so with good environmental stewardship. With 70 percent of the American people in support of it and 12 million Americans still out of work, there is no reasonable excuse to postpone a decision any further."