Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts speaks to lawmakers after being sworn into office as Nebraska's 40th governor at a ceremony in the Capitol's legislative chamber, in Lincoln, Neb., Thursday, Jan. 8, 2015. (AP)
With a key legal challenge tossed out of a Nebraska state court, it's time to "get going" and build the Keystone XL oil pipeline, Nebraska Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts says.
"We had a good political process that worked," the governor declared during his first statewide radio call-in show, the
Columbus Telegram reports. "I would encourage the [Obama] administration to go ahead and approve it. We should get going on it."
Ricketts' push for the
pipeline – touted by supporters as a jobs-and-economy builder and opposed by environmentalists who argue leaks could be disastrous – adds more pressure to calls from GOP lawmakers for the project to move ahead.
Nebraska's Supreme Court last Friday threw out a lawsuit challenging the pipeline's route through the state and upheld Keystone's proposed path – a move that President Barack Obama had said he was awaiting before making a long-awaited decision on the project.
The court didn't decide on the merits of the case – whether former GOP Gov. Dave Heineman and the state Legislature overstepped their constitutional bounds by expediting the pipeline approval process — but ruled that Nebraska landowners didn't have legal standing to challenge the pipeline, the
Washington Times notes.
Yet despite Republican support, Obama has
threatened to veto any legislation from Congress to build the proposed 1,179-mile pipeline, which would carry more than 800,000 barrels of crude oil a day from Canada to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast.
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