On January 18, 2012, the U.S. State Department recommended to
President Obama that the Presidential Permit for TransCanada
Corp.'s Keystone XL pipeline be denied. President Obama
concurred with this recommendation, which according to a State
Department spokesperson was "predicated on the fact that the
Department does not have sufficient time to obtain the information
necessary to assess whether the project, in its current state, is
in the national interest".
The State Department's reference to the time constraint
refers to the Temporary Payroll Tax Cut Continuation Act
of 2011 ("Act"), passed by
Congress and signed by President Obama on December 23,
2011. Subsection 501(a) of the Act provided
that the President had 60 days from the enactment of the
Act to issue a Presidential Permit for the Keystone XL
pipeline. Under Subsection 501(b), the President did not have
to issue the Presidential Permit if he determined that Keystone XL
was not in the national interest.
