Former President Bill Clinton said yesterday that "we should embrace" the Keystone XL pipeline and called for a new system of "high standards" to complete work on the project.

The remarks of the 42nd president come as his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, may make a final decision on a pipeline permit. Earlier this week, TransCanada announced it would move ahead with building the southern portion of the pipeline and reapply for a permit later from the State Department for the northern segment running from Canada to Nebraska

Speaking at an Energy Department conference in Maryland, former president Clinton said: "One of the most amazing things to me about this Keystone pipeline deal is that they [TransCanada] ever filed that route in the first place since they could have gone around Nebraska's Sandhills and avoided most of the danger, no matter how imagined, to the Ogallala [Aquifer] with a different route, which I presume we'll get now ... because the extra cost of running it is infinitesimal compared to the revenues that would be generated over a long period of time."

"I think we should embrace it and develop a stakeholder-driven system of high standards for doing the work," Clinton added about Keystone XL.

The Obama administration denied a cross-border permit for the 1,700-mile pipeline in January, citing concerns about the lack of an alternative route around Nebraska's Sandhills and the aquifer.

In his speech, Clinton also criticized Congress for blocking legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He said the United States is the only country in the world with a political party for which it's "ideologically imperative" to deny the reality of climate change (E&ENews PM, Feb. 29).

Environmentalists slammed Clinton's remarks as being contradictory, considering that Keystone XL would ferry a form of oil from Canada's oil sands that is more carbon-intensive to produce than traditional forms. Clinton also said he supported renewed oil and gas development, a process that would increase infrastructure for carbon-emitting fossil fuels, they said.

"Coming from a man who managed to accomplish exactly nothing about climate change in his eight years in office, I wasn't entirely surprised," said 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben, who led protests at the White House against the pipeline last year.

Meanwhile, White House spokesman Jay Carney said yesterday that anyone who is telling his or her constituents that approval of Keystone XL would lower the price of gas at their local gas station is "blowing a lot of smoke." Opponents of the pipeline have long bashed the claim that the pipeline would reduce oil prices, considering that there is a glut of oil sands crude in the Midwest, creating a price discount on the fuel there.

Carney reiterated the president's position, though, that the denial of the project in January was made not on the project's merits but because of a deadline set by Congress before the Nebraska situation was resolved.

Pipeline supporters say that the concerns about the climate impact of the oil sands are overblown. A study released last week in Nature Climate Change says that burning oil sands fuels in Canada would have a minuscule impact on warming temperatures in comparison to coal and gas. Many supporters also say that the project would enhance energy security and place downward pressure on prices over time.

The Obama administration should act immediately "to send a clear message to markets that more supply is coming by approving the Keystone XL pipeline and making more federal lands available to drilling," Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) said yesterday in a statement.

Reporter Gabriel Nelson contributed.