All but four Senate Republicans today backed an upper-chamber plan to undo President Obama's rejection of a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline and immediately begin construction of the $7 billion link between Canada's oil sands and Gulf Coast refineries.

The introduction of a new Senate bill expediting the XL line, which Obama denied a permit on Jan. 18, gives that chamber two parallel paths to keep the project in the public eye this spring. Today's legislation, authored by Sens. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and John Hoeven (R-N.D.), would replace the executive order that empowered the State Department to review and ultimately urge a veto of the pipeline with a go-ahead from the legislative branch. One Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, has signed on as a co-sponsor.

"It will create thousands of jobs, help control fuel prices at the pump and reduce our reliance on Middle East oil, and it can be accomplished with congressional authority, just as the [Trans-]Alaska Pipeline was nearly 40 years ago," Hoeven said in a statement on the measure.

In addition to the Lugar-Hoeven bill, which would allow Nebraska officials to work with the federal government on a new route for the pipeline through their state but obviate the need for an official memorandum on the process, the House GOP is advancing a plan from Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) to give the independent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 30 days to OK the project. That proposal is likely to be a part of the House's offshore drilling and infrastructure package set for a floor vote later this spring (E&E Daily, Jan. 30).

Either the Congress- or the FERC-focused approach to overriding Obama's veto of the pipeline would be supported by Senate Republicans, Lugar senior adviser Neil Brown said today.

"Clearly there is a huge amount of Senate support for our new bill," Brown said via email. "The goal of succeeding where the President has failed is most important, though. We'll also support [the House] approach if it comes over here."

Whether more Senate Democrats would join Lugar and Hoeven's 44 co-sponsors, however, remains an open question. Environmentalists and liberal groups continue to mobilize against the pipeline's promised influx of 700,000-plus daily barrels of Canadian oil-sands crude, slamming the fuel as too polluting to justify the hotly disputed number of U.S. jobs that the pipeline would create.

"Republicans in Congress need to stop wasting precious time doing the bidding of Big Oil and instead, address the climate crisis and create long-term jobs in a new, clean energy economy," said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement on the new bill.

Those greens have a vocal Senate ally in Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with Democrats and said last week that he would be "shocked and disappointed" to see the pipeline come back before the chamber following Obama's veto.

The four Republicans who declined to sign on as original co-sponsors of the pipeline bill are Scott Brown of Massachusetts, who faces a tough re-election battle this fall; Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine; and Mark Kirk of Illinois.

Click here to read a copy of the new Senate legislation.