Congress cannot accelerate Keystone decision: State Department

Congress cannot accelerate Keystone decision: State Department

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department warned on Monday that a devise by congressional Republicans to discerning lane a Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL tube preference would violate environmental laws and force it to secrete approval.

"Should Congress levy an capricious deadline for a assent preference ... a dialect would be incompetent to make a integrity to emanate a assent for this project," a State Department pronounced in a statement.

Republicans in a House of Representatives have pronounced they devise to embody capitulation of a TransCanada Corp's Keystone XL in a payroll taxation cut bill, lifting a domestic stakes on a issue.

President Barack Obama has warned he would halt any check that related discerning capitulation of a Keystone tube to fluctuating a taxation cut for American workers that is due to end on Dec 31.

Both Republicans and Democrats wish to pass an prolongation of a payroll taxation cut in a subsequent dual weeks, though they are pided on how best to do it.

The Keystone magnitude helped Republican leaders secure support for their bill, though it still needs to pass a Democratic-led Senate, where some lawmakers have already urged Majority Leader Harry Reid to reject it.

Approval of a pipeline, that would lift 700,000 barrels per day of wanton oil from Canada's connect sands, now rests with a State Department. The Republican magnitude seeks to take a preference out of Obama's hands and accelerate capitulation in partial to emanate U.S. jobs.

Obama destined a State Department final month to control an additional environmental examination of a $7 billion pipeline. That would punt a preference on either to approve a devise until after subsequent year's presidential election.

The State Department underscored it had long-standing management to manipulate needing for cross-border pipelines and had led a "a rigorous, consummate and pure process" that contingency run a course.

A short-cut pushed by by Congress "would not usually concede a process, it would demarcate a dialect from behaving consistently with National Environmental Policy Act mandate by not permitting sufficient time for a growth of this information," it said.

Environmentalists contend a tube would bluster Nebraska's Sand Hills segment and lead to aloft hothouse gas emissions, and had threatened to reason behind on campaigning for Obama in a election.

The State Department is now receiving additional information on probable swap routes that equivocate a Sand Hills in Nebraska, and believes this examination could be finished in time for a preference to be done in initial entertain 2013, it said.

(Reporting By Andrew Quinn; modifying by Christopher Wilson)

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