Obama Will Veto Senate's Pro-Keystone XL Bill

The White House announced Tuesday afternoon that President Obama plans to veto a newly introduced pro-Keystone XL bill if it passes the Senate, the Associated Press reports.

Senators John Hoeven, R-North Dakota, and Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, introduced a bill on the Senate floor Tuesday that would immediately approve the Keystone XL pipeline for construction. The bill was introduced with 60 co-sponsors—54 Republicans and six Democrats—totalling the number of yes votes needed to approve the bill with a filibuster-proof majority, The Hill reports.

Hoeven told Bloomberg Businessweek that an additional three senators intend to vote in favor of the bill, bringing the total yes votes to 63. If true, the bill would still need another four votes to override a potential presidential veto.

President Obama recently said that Keystone XL would have no “nominal benefit” for Americans, reiterating that the promise of jobs and cheaper oil prices from the pipeline is largely myth.

“At issue in Keystone is not American oil. It’s Canadian oil that’s drawn out of tar sands in Canada. That oil currently is being shipped out through rail or trucks and it would save Canadian oil companies and the Canadian oil industry an enormous amount of money if they could simply pipe it all the way down to the Gulf,” Obama said at a year-end press conference in December. “Once that oil gets to the Gulf, it is then entering into the world market and it would be sold all around the world.”

If the bill passes, and Obama vetoes it as promised, Senate Republicans tell Reuters they have a plan to pass the legislation later in the year.

"We may not have enough to overcome a veto, so it may be a two-step process," Hoeven said.

The Senate will debate the bill for several weeks, Hoeven said. The pro-Keystone coalition hopes that opening the bill to additional amendments may help them gain additional votes from Senate Democrats.

“These amendments will make it better but certainly not good enough at this point in time—and I think there will be enough Democratic votes to sustain the president’s veto,” Senator Chuck Schumer, D-New York, told CBS News on Sunday.