Updated at 9:55 a.m.

The Obama administration's plans to put off a final decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until 2013 did not stop both sides of the raging debate over the $7 billion project from making major moves yesterday.

While the company behind the proposed Canada-to-U.S. link suggested that it could seek other ways to begin building the project before Election Day, environmentalists redoubled their campaign against it with blistering new questions about "collusion" between the company and President Obama's State Department -- which is in charge of reviewing Keystone XL's environmental and economic impacts.

The volley by green opponents of Alberta-based TransCanada Corp.'s pipeline, which would nearly double U.S. import capacity of Canadian oil-sands crude if approved, came in a round of newly released emails between State officials and company representatives that stems from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed last year. An earlier email release revealed cozy relations between an aide at the U.S. embassy in Ottawa and a TransCanada lobbyist, forcing State to face environmentalists' conflict-of-interest charges head-on (E&E Daily, Oct. 3).

The new round of emails, to be released today, contains none of the emoticon-inflected banter that shined a spotlight on greens' allegations of a pro-Keystone XL bias at State. But the groups renewed their criticism of the department nonetheless, pointing to redacted passages from the new emails as "raising cover-up concerns."

"The evidence indicates State Department employees have inappropriately shown favoritism toward TransCanada -- acting as though it was their job to ensure the pipeline was approved rather than that an impartial review was conducted," advocates at Friends of the Earth (FoE) wrote in a memo on the emails' release. "It also shows that the department is hiding something."

A State spokesman parried environmentalists' complaints over the redacted documents, saying via email that "the Department has complied fully with the FOIA request and rejects any assertions to the contrary.”

TransCanada has long hotly denied charges from FoE and other conservationists that State's review of Keystone XL is compromised, and it reiterated that stance yesterday as company CEO Russ Girling reaffirmed his commitment to getting the pipeline built. Girling told an investors' conference in Toronto that a progressing deal to reroute the pipeline within Nebraska could secure State's approval in less than a year, and another TransCanada executive raised the prospect of seeking Obama administration go-ahead for an initial portion of the XL link, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

Asked to comment on greens' ongoing criticism of company ties to State, TransCanada spokesman James Millar said that "it's absurd to suggest that any one person might influence a process that includes the involvement of areas of government such as the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice and many others."

"It is unfortunate our opponents continue to resort to personal attacks on our employees -- I think the American people would expect more," Millar added via email.

Despite the continentwide battle over Keystone XL's emissions-intensive oil-sands crude, which environmentalists and industry see as a proxy for maneuvering over the long-term U.S. fuel consumption mix for years to come, State has stood by the 2013 timeframe it announced one week ago. The department continued its emphasis on energy supplies yesterday by opening a new bureau focused on the issue (Greenwire, Nov. 16).

Yet that bureau's new chief, Carlos Pascual, told reporters that he is "recused at this time" from addressing the pre-existing Keystone XL review.

This article was updated to include comment from the State Department.