State won’t ‘expedite’ new Keystone XL permit application

From a conference call with reporters yesterday with Asst. Secretary of State, Kerri-Ann Jones:

QUESTION: Hi. Thank you for holding this call. TransCanada, in its statement today, said that they expect to – that they plan to reapply. And one of the things that they said is that they “expect a new application” – I’m reading from their press statement – “would be processed in an expedited manner to allow for an in-service date of late 2014. TransCanada expects that consideration of a renewed application will make use of the exhaustive record compiled over the past three-plus years.”

So I wanted to ask you about that. Do you – I mean, if TransCanada reapplies, as it says it will, what use will the previous assessments – what role will they play in any kind of new EIS? And how realistic is this late 2014 date? Will you have this expedited process as they’re – as they say that you will?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY JONES: Thank you for that question. If the – if TransCanada comes in with a new application, it will trigger a new review process, a completely new review process. We cannot state that anything would be expedited or – at this time. It would just have to go through all of the requirements that are needed for this kind of application review. So I couldn’t really speak to when such a review could be finished.

However, I could mention that we do have guidelines that would allow us to use information that’s out there. So there is information out there from the process we’ve been through, but we would also have to look at this as a completely new application, and that’s how it would be treated.

***

Twitter/luizachsavage