“I anticipate that next week sometime we’ll have a vote in the Senate [on the Keystone XL Pipeline bill] hopefully advance it and go to conference with the House and then send it to the president [Obama],” Hoeven said during an interview with C-SPAN when asked when the Keystone XL Pipeline bill would be voted on in the US Senate.
Senator Hoeven argued that President Obama was taking credit for the United States, producing more oil and gas and becoming more energy secure. However, Hoeven said that if the president vetoed the Keystone bill, as he has stated previously, he would be “holding up the kind of infrastructure we need to continue to do it again.”
During State of the Union address on Tuesday, Obama urged Congress to pass a bipartisan infrastructure plan that could create more jobs than the current Keystone XL Pipeline proposal, allowing the company TransCanada Corporation to build and operate the pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to the US Gulf Coast.
The White House and President Obama have already made numerous threats to veto the controversial project Keystone XL Pipeline should the bill be presented to the president.
The US House recently passed the Keystone XL Pipeline bill claiming that the project would help the US economy by creating jobs.
Although activists claim the Keystone pipeline would have a negative effect on the environment, a final State Department Environmental Impact Statement released in January said that there will be no significant impact from the project.