President Barack Obama announced his administration's formal rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline on Friday.
"The State Department has decided that the Keystone XL pipeline would not serve the national interests of the United States," he said at a White House news conference. "I agree with that decision."
The massive project would have carried oil from Canada almost 1,200 miles to the Gulf Coast in the US. Obama said it would harm the environment and argued that its construction would neither create jobs nor lower energy prices.
"Shipping dirtier crude oil into our country would not increase America's energy security," Obama said as he stood next to Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry.
"America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change," he added. "And frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership. And that's the biggest risk we face.
"Ultimately, if we're going to prevent large parts of this earth from becoming not only inhospitable, but uninhabitable, in our lifetimes, we're going to have to keep some fossil fuels into the ground rather than burn them."
The administration's rejection of the Keystone pipeline does not come as a surprise, as Obama vetoed a Republican-backed bill to fast track the project in February.
TransCanada, the company behind the pipeline, asked the State Department to suspend its review of the project. The US rejected that request on Wednesday — a move many saw as a sign the pipeline would be rejected.
The pipeline's supporters argued that it would create jobs and lower energy prices, while environmentalists and many Democrats argued that it would increase the effects of climate change.
"This is a big win," May Boeve, executive director of the environmentalist group 350.org, said in a statement. "President Obama's decision to reject Keystone XL because of its impact on the climate is nothing short of historic — and sets an important precedent that should send shockwaves through the fossil-fuel industry."
"The D.C. establishment once called this pipeline a done deal," added Tom Steyer, president of another environmentalist group, NextGen Climate. "Today, the leader of the free world stood side by side with a brave and diverse clean-energy coalition and pointed our country towards a brighter, more prosperous future."
Meanwhile, Republican leaders expressed their disappointment with Obama's announcement, which they attributed to the influence of special-interest groups.
"I wish I were surprised by the president's decision to reject this jobs and infrastructure project," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) said in a statement. "But it's become painfully clear that the president is more interested in appeasing deep-pocketed special interests and extremists than helping tens of thousands of Americans who could have benefited from Keystone's good jobs."
A statement from House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) blasting Obama was similar to McConnell's.
"This decision isn't surprising, but it is sickening," Ryan said. "By rejecting this pipeline, the president is rejecting tens of thousands of good-paying jobs. He is rejecting our largest trading partner and energy supplier. He is rejecting the will of the American people and a bipartisan majority of the Congress. If the president wants to spend the rest of his time in office catering to special interests, that's his choice to make. But it's just wrong."
