North Dakota Senator Speaks Out on Keystone XL Pipeline

Freshman Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) says that approval for the controversial pipeline has “taken longer than it took us to defeat Hitler.”

September 30, 2013

WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) is taking on President Obama over the long-delayed approval for the Keystone XL Pipeline — “and she predicts her side will prevail,” writes USA Today.

"We know that we have the votes here in the Senate; we certainly have the votes in the House," she told the newspaper last week in an interview, adding, "In fact, I think we could build enough votes to override a veto."

Heitkamp expressed her impatience with the administration: "The Keystone Pipeline decision has taken longer than it took us to defeat Hitler," she said. "There's just something wrong with this process."

Obama "got himself painted into the corner" by environmentalists who oppose the pipeline, she continued, adding the president is “having a very difficult time to find a real, factual, legal reason to deny the permit."

On September 19, Heitkamp explained in a letter to President Obama how an August trip to view development of the Canadian oil sands reinforced how crucial the pipeline is to the United States. During that trip she met with stakeholders in the extraction, production and transportation industries, and discussed with Canadian officials their efforts to minimize the pipeline’s impact on the environment.

“It’s disappointing we’re at this point where five years later we still don’t have an answer on the Keystone XL pipeline,” said Heitkamp in a press release. “To my knowledge, no senior members of the [Obama] Administration have visited the oil sands. But, in order to make an informed decision about this project, such a trip is needed to see the technology firsthand, clarify many of the issues the Administration thinks it may have with the project, and fully realize the responsible impact it could have on the U.S. … It’s in our economic, national security, and energy interests to approve this pipeline from our neighbor and ally as we continue to build an all-of-the-above energy strategy that could lead us toward North American energy independence. This project needs to be approved.”

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