WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? The White House said on Thursday that finding an alternate route for the Keystone XL oil pipeline would take time and any effort to circumvent the approval process would be "counterproductive."
President Barack Obama faces a February 21 deadline set by Congress to either allow TransCanada's $7 billion, Canada-to-Texas pipeline or determine that the project is not in the national interest.
White House spokesman Jay Carney declined to say whether the deadline would force the Obama administration to reject the project, but he reiterated concerns about a hastened environmental review.
"There is a reason why this process has within it the duration required to properly review all the different aspects of a project like this, and to weigh all the different criteria," Carney told reporters.
Carney said an alternate route had not been mapped out for the pipeline through Nebraska, where there are environmental concerns over the project. He said the state of Nebraska needed six to nine months to do its own environmental assessment.
Environmental groups have made defeating the pipeline a top priority. But Congressional Republicans, labor unions, the oil industry and other project supporters have turned up the political pressure to allow the project to move forward.
Republican senators are working on contingency legislation that would allow Congress to green-light the project if Obama says no.
Carney declined to comment directly on that plan. "There's several layers of speculation about legislation that may or may not be written, that may or may not be submitted, that may or may not be voted on," he told reporters.
(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Sandra Maler and Vicki Allen)
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