By Roberta Rampton and Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Pressure for President Barack Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline increased after a State Department report played down the impact it would have on climate change, irking environmentalists and delighting the project's proponents.
But the White House signaled late on Friday that a decision on an application by TransCanada Corp to build the $5.4 billion project would be made "only after careful consideration" of the report, along with comments from the public and other government agencies.
"The Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement includes a range of estimates of the project's climate impacts, and that information will now need to be closely evaluated by Secretary (of State John) Kerry and other relevant agency heads in the weeks ahead," White House spokesman Matt Lehrich said.
The White House comment came after proponents of the pipeline, which would transport crude from Alberta's oil sands to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, crowed about how the State Department report cleared the way for Obama to greenlight the project.
The agency made no explicit recommendation. But the State Department said blocking Keystone XL - or any pipeline - would do little to slow the expansion of Canada's vast oil sands, maintaining the central finding of a preliminary study issued last year.
The 11-volume report's publication opened a new and potentially final stage of an approval process that has dragged for more than five years, taking on enormous political significance.
With another three-month review process ahead and no firm deadline for a decision on the 1,179-mile (1,898-km) line, the issue threatens to drag into the 2014 congressional elections in November.
Obama is under pressure from several vulnerable Democratic senators who favor the pipeline and face re-election at a time when Democrats are scrambling to hang on to control of the U.S. Senate. The project looms over the president's economic and environmental legacy.
Canada's oil sands are the world's third-largest crude oil reserve, behind Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, and the largest open to private investment. The oil sands contain more than 170 billion barrels of bitumen, a tar-like form of crude that requires more energy to extract than conventional oil.
Obama said in June that he was closely watching the review and said he believed the pipeline should go ahead "only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution."
NOT OVER YET
The report offered some solace to climate activists who want to stem the rise of oil sands output. It reaffirmed that Canada's heavy crude reserves require more energy to produce and process - and therefore result in higher greenhouse gas emissions - than conventional oil fields.