Minutes after President Obama rejected its Keystone XL pipeline plan today, TransCanada Corp. said it would reapply for federal approval of its beleaguered project connecting the Alberta oil sands with Gulf Coast refineries.

"While we are disappointed, TransCanada remains fully committed to the construction of Keystone XL," CEO Russ Girling said in a statement that predicted "expedited" processing of a reapplication by the same State Department that today denied a permit to the $7 billion project (see related story).

But Assistant Secretary of State Kerri-Ann Jones, who briefed reporters today on the Obama administration's denial of the 1,700-mile pipeline in response to a GOP-written deadline of Feb. 21, declined to commit to such a fast-tracked consideration.

While existing rules for evaluating cross-border oil pipelines "allow us to use information that's [already] out there" about the environmental impact of a proposed project, Jones said, "we'd also have to look at this as a completely new application, and that's how it would be treated."

The reapplication plans from TransCanada amount to an official greenlight for GOP attempts to override Obama's rejection today of the pipeline, given that an abandonment of the massive oil sands crude project would effectively deny Republicans anything to push forward through legislation.

The company's plans also keep Nebraska in the political spotlight over the project, as its environmental regulators seek to complete review of an alternate route for Keystone XL within the six-to-nine-month time frame they outlined late last year. Its announcement also puts unions squarely in the center of a tug of war over the job-creation potential of the pipeline, which four major labor groups have endorsed after committing their members to work on its construction.

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers President Edwin Hill said in a statement that while he disapproved of Obama's rejection, his union would treat the denial as a "temporary setback."

"We believe that the decisionmaking process has been caught up in political gamesmanship," Hill added.

Several other unions, however, joined the Sierra Club in praising the White House decision. Those groups included the United Auto Workers, the Service Employees International Union and the Communications Workers of America.