WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday passed a bill to force approval of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline, which President Obama is certain to veto in his first official clash with the new Republican-majority Congress.
The five-year fight over the Keystone pipeline has become a proxy symbol for far broader fights over climate change, energy and the economy, and for the conflict between Mr. Obama and congressional Republicans.
When Republicans won control of the Senate late last year, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the new majority leader, chose the Keystone bill as the first measure Republicans would send to Mr. Obama.
The White House promptly declared that Mr. Obama would veto the measure — which would force the approval of a proposed 1,179-mile oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico — in a stroke of the pen that is expected to be the opening shot in a series of vetoes of Republican measures.
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Despite the fierce debate over the Keystone, and its potency as a symbol of energy and environmental policy, experts have pointed out repeatedly that that symbolism vastly outweighs its substance as either energy or economic policy. Environmentalists fighting the construction of the pipeline contend that by providing a conduit to oil from the Alberta oil sands, which produces more carbon pollution when extracted than conventional oil, the pipeline will contribute to climate change. But the State Department review of the project concluded that the oil would be extracted and brought to market with or without the Keystone, via rail and other existing pipelines.
Republicans promote the project as a major source of employment and an economic engine, but the State Department review estimated that Keystone would support only about 35 permanent jobs. Keystone would create about 42,000 temporary jobs over the two years it will take to build — about 3,900 of them in construction and the rest are in indirect support jobs, such as food service. In comparison, there were 241,000 new jobs created in December alone. Over all, the jobs represented by Keystone account than for less one-tenth of 1 percent of the American economy.
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the final totals of the Senate vote on the Keystone XL oil pipeline. The final vote was 62 to 36, not 60 to 36.
