U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) called on President Obama to stop lobbying against an amendment that the Senate will consider today that would move forward the Keystone XL pipeline project.В President Obama halted the permitting of this pipeline from Canada, which would create thousands of jobs.
“This is ridiculous. With price of gas soaring, the President blasts anyone who criticizes his lack of an energy strategy, but then he’s lobbying to stop a common-sense amendment allowing Keystone XL pipeline to move forward. The President should stop lobbying against it and get behind this critical job-creating pipeline,” said Hatch. “People in Utah are a lot smarter than that – they know that more American energy provides much needed jobs, will help lower the price at the pump, and stops a dangerous dependency on foreign oil.”
The news organization Politico reported that “President Barack Obama is intervening in a Senate fight over the Keystone XL oil pipeline and personally lobbying Democrats to reject an amendment calling for its construction, according to several sources familiar with the talks.” Politico said that the President’s effort to strike-down the provision to move the job-creating Keystone XL project forward includes “phone calls from the president to Democrats.”
Hatch has repeatedly called on the White House to approve completion of the pipeline, and is a cosponsor of an amendment authored by Senator John Hoeven (R-ND) that would greenlight the Keystone XL pipeline project under Congress’s authority enumerated in the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8.