The second-ranked Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday pressed its Democratic chairman for a hearing on the Keystone XL pipeline, the latest signal that the controversial Canada-to-U.S. project will remain politically galvanizing in the run-up to the 2012 election.

In a letter to Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.), Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) -- who stands to claim the panel's gavel in 2013 if Democrats lose control of the Senate and current ranking member Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) loses his hard-fought primary race -- sought a hearing on Keystone XL while slamming the State Department's decision last week to delay a final decision on its federal permit for more than a year.

"I view approval of this pipeline as a strategic effort to improve ties with an important partner in the Western Hemisphere, which is essential to energy security, and ultimately our national security interests," Corker wrote to Kerry, calling the Obama administration postponement "disturbing" and possibly motivated by "election year politics."

Kerry, a member of the congressional debt-cutting "supercommittee" that is reaching its final hours of negotiation today, suggested in a statement released two weeks before State's announcement of a fresh round of environmental review that a hearing on the $7 billion pipeline might be forthcoming.

"There's a lot at stake here and I'll do my best to leave no question unanswered including every possible economic and environmental consideration before a final decision is made," Kerry said, touting multiple previous opportunities for committee members to track State's progress in assessing Keystone XL.

"I think that the environmental focus I brought to this committee, and the environmental bona fides of President Obama and Secretary Clinton, should underscore that we all approach this issue with appropriate seriousness and sensitivity."

A committee source said Corker's hearing request is being reviewed.

At the heart of the debate over Keystone XL, which would nearly double U.S. import capacity for Canadian oil sands crude if the administration signs off, is the extent to which State's environmental review fully addressed concerns over emissions, water quality, wildlife, lower-income refinery communities and other issues pinpointed by U.S. EPA as well as green groups seeking to derail the project over its potential pollution impacts.

One of Capitol Hill's strongest critics of the existing State review, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), yesterday urged Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to expand her department's new environmental assessment beyond the pipeline rerouting in Nebraska sparked by local fears of adverse effects on a major aquifer that Keystone XL would have crossed (E&E Daily, Nov. 15).

Sanders also reiterated his opposition to State's use of a contractor with previous ties to the company behind Keystone XL, Alberta-based TransCanada Corp., to lead the drafting of previous environmental reviews of the pipeline (E&ENews PM, Oct. 26). Assistant Secretary of State Kerri-Ann Jones, responding to a question from E&E Daily, last week dismissed the conflict-of-interest charges raised by Sanders and other pipeline skeptics and said that the contractor at issue, Cardno Entrix, could be chosen to conduct the extra environmental assessment ordered by the administration.

Asking Cardno Entrix to supervise the new pipeline review "will unnecessarily taint" the final product, Sanders told Clinton, calling on State to "select a new and truly impartial third-party contractor."

TransCanada, for its part, has joined State in strongly denying the allegations that its role in choosing Cardno Entrix to conduct the Keystone XL review put the contractor at the risk of leading a biased review.

Click here to read Corker's letter to Kerry.

Click here to read Sanders' letter to Clinton.