A House Republican bill overriding President Obama's veto of the Keystone XL oil pipeline is set to edge closer to a floor vote this week, strengthening the GOP's footing on what's shaping up to be the most intense energy battle of the winter.

Slated for markup and a vote tomorrow in the Energy and Commerce Committee is a plan from Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) that would give the independent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission -- which supervises gas lines but has scant experience with siting of oil lines -- 30 days to OK the $7 billion XL link between Canada's oil sands and Gulf Coast refineries.

The bill is a major priority for Republican leaders who view Obama's Jan. 18 rejection of Keystone XL as a massive election-year liability for his party, given the number of jobs and amount of stable oil supplies that the pipeline could ensure. "This is a shovel-ready project that won't cost taxpayers a dime," Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said Friday in a statement announcing his panel's vote.

"It is the ideal energy infrastructure project -- one that will create jobs while expanding access to safe and secure energy supplies from a close ally and trading partner," Upton added of Keystone XL, which would nearly double U.S. import capacity for emissions-intensive Canadian oil sands crude if approved.

But Democrats are growing more emboldened in their resistance to forcing through an oil line that still stands a good chance of winning a permit next year, particularly when the optics of Terry's bill amount to "trying to jam the president," as House Minority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) put it last week (E&ENews PM, Jan. 31).

Rep. Charles Gonzalez of Texas, one of 47 in the president's party who in July backed a different Terry bill fast-tracking Keystone XL, epitomized the reticence of red-state Democrats at a Friday hearing on the legislation. FERC testified last month that the 30-day window it is given by the Terry plan would mean "no discretion in the issuance of the permit" as well as an insufficient public record and judicial review period, Gonzalez reminded fellow lawmakers (E&ENews PM, Jan. 25).

"I don't believe that this bill is the best method of accomplishing the building out of the Keystone pipeline, which I support," the Texas Democrat added.

Yet the loss of Democratic swing votes for the pipeline proposal appears to leave Republicans undaunted. The GOP is embracing a political strategy of adding the Terry bill, along with language boosting offshore and Alaskan drilling as a pot-sweetener for conservatives who may waver when presented with the House's new long-term transportation bill.

Advancing the Canada-to-U.S. pipeline aligns with Republicans' plans to tout the transportation bill as a job-creation blueprint. But Democrats join the State Department in disputing GOP and oil-industry claims that Keystone XL would generate 20,000-plus jobs -- a message seized on last week by top Energy and Commerce Democrat Rep. Henry Waxman of California, who challenged the Indiana governor's lobbying expenditures to help promote the pipeline's benefits.

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) fired back Friday in a letter to Waxman that pointed out the manufacturing upside the pipeline would present to companies in his and other states not directly crossed by the project.

Waxman's "assumption that not being along the pipeline route prohibits economic benefits does not take into account how manufacturing supply chains work in this country," Lugar wrote.

Meanwhile, Democrats last week put another arrow in their messaging quiver against the Keystone XL bill with a measure of their own that would prevent the export of oil sent through the pipeline (Greenwire, Feb. 3). While that proposal is likely to come up as an amendment to Terry's legislation tomorrow, its prospects for passage are slim at best.

Still, the American Petroleum Institute (API) on Friday issued a statement from chief economist John Felmy that lambasted the Democratic no-exports bill as "a North Korean style model of economics and has no place here in America," signaling that the measure's lack of momentum did not fully neutralize its impact.

GOP-backed tweaks to the legislation, however, could well emerge tomorrow. After an Army Corps of Engineers regulatory official testified Friday that Terry's legislation "would eliminate any opportunity" for her agency to conduct its typical permitting and oversight process for waterways crossed by the pipeline, the congressman indicated that changes were in the works to ensure more direct Army Corps authority over Keystone XL.

In addition to giving FERC a 30-day window to consider the pipeline, which the agency testified last month would effectively require a green light, Terry's bill also allows Nebraska officials to continue working out an alternate route for the XL link that skirts the state's ecologically sensitive Sand Hills. The pipeline's sponsor has agreed to begin that process, though the new route is not yet chosen.

Click here to read the text of the Keystone XL legislation.

Schedule: The markup will begin today at 4 p.m. for opening statements and continue tomorrow, Feb. 7, at 12 p.m. in 2123 Rayburn.