House Republicans will try to pass a 90-day extension of transportation programs with language approving the Keystone XL pipeline, likely in hopes of moving to a conference with the Senate on the transportation reauthorization.

A Transportation and Infrastructure Committee aide confirmed that Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) and committee Republicans were working on a 90-day bill. Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans said in a statement this morning that leaders would "insist" that Keystone language be part of a transportation bill.

Passing the extension would let House Republicans force a conference with the Senate on a long-term surface transportation bill after several failed attempts to move a bill tying energy production and infrastructure. The addition of the Keystone language gives Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) something to offer conservatives who have opposed the notion of bowing to the Senate on its transportation bill.

Republicans pointed to this week's announcement by Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP that its planned expansion of an oil sands crude pipeline to Canada's West Coast would double its size -- giving the industry up to 550,000 barrels per day of new capacity to ship to Asia -- in explaining their renewed push to force approval of Keystone XL.

"While the U.S. has been the largest consumer of Canadian oil, the president's rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline has forced our northern neighbor and ally to look for other customers," Energy and Commerce Republicans said in their announcement of the new transportation bill strategy. "As a result, the U.S. may lose access to these stable, affordable energy supplies."

That Kinder Morgan pipeline, Trans Mountain, is expected to face an easier way around resistance from Canada's First Nations aboriginal community than is faced by a competing project from Enbridge, known as Northern Gateway. While the latter project would require approvals for a new corridor, Trans Mountain would use the already-built path of an oil link that now carries as many as 300,000 barrels per day of oil sands crude.

The House passed a similar 90-day transportation bill that extended programs through June 30 at the end of March after several failed attempts by the House to pass its own five-year reauthorization with ties to expanded energy production.

The Senate, meanwhile, passed a two-year, $109 billion bill with bipartisan support. House Democrats are pushing for that bill to be brought up on the House floor, but GOP leaders have balked at that suggestion.

Before the recess, Boehner and Mica had promised to move a long-term bill as soon as possible, eyeing the end of this month to give them enough time to conference something with the Senate before a June 30 expiration.

Boehner has so far been unsuccessful in whipping up enough Republican support for an energy-for-infrastructure bill, with conservatives wary of the large price tag for the bill and moderates concerned about some reform language and funding cuts. A 90-day extension is thought to be noncontroversial enough to pass muster and give the House some language to bring to a Senate conference.

If the House GOP gambit succeeds in forcing a fresh Senate vote on Keystone XL before June, Democrats could face significant difficulties keeping their electorally vulnerable and red-state members from dealing Obama a political embarrassment on the pipeline.

A March vote on overriding the president's XL veto saw 11 Democrats breaking to vote with Republicans in favor of the project, leaving the GOP as few as two votes away from success (E&ENews PM, March 8). In the unlikely event that the GOP succeeds in attaching Keystone XL to a conference report on a long-term transportation bill, however, one of the pipeline's liberal Democratic critics in the upper chamber could attempt a filibuster that would require 41 Democrats to reject the deal.