The company behind the Keystone XL pipeline project today postponed its expected completion date until 2015, an acknowledgement that the hurdles facing GOP efforts to fast-track the project could force backers to accept the Obama administration's time frame.

In reporting a $1.6 billion profit for 2011, TransCanada Corp. said it already has spent $2.4 billion of an expected $7.6 billion total for Keystone XL. After it affirmed a continued commitment to building the 1,700-mile link between the Canadian oil sands and Gulf Coast refineries, the Alberta-based company added that it aims to "largely maintain the construction schedule" and anticipates a start date of early 2015 following what it continues to term an "expedited" review by the Obama administration.

The company's last public statement had projected that the pipeline could begin shipping oil sands crude to the Gulf as early as 2014, six years after its first permit bid was submitted to the State Department. But Keystone XL has become a political football as Republicans clamor to override President Obama's denial of the project last month, citing concerns over a proposed rerouting in Nebraska.

TransCanada said today it "continues to work with the state of Nebraska to determine the best route that avoids the Sandhills region," an ecologically sensitive area that green activists and ranchers had warned could be put at risk if the 36-inch pipeline is built across it.

On Capitol Hill, the House readied plans to sever its pro-Keystone XL legislation from a larger transportation bill troubled by intra-GOP tension (see related story). Environmentalists working to bring down the pipeline were turning their focus to the Senate, where Democratic leaders have yet to decide whether they would allow a vote on a Republican bid to expedite the pipeline during debate on their own infrastructure plan.

Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the lead author of her chamber's infrastructure bill, said today that she did not know whether the Keystone XL amendment -- which she blasts as a poison pill and which the panel's ranking Republican remains reluctant about linking to transportation -- would receive a vote.

"Everybody's counting votes -- until that plays out, I don't think there's going to be any real consideration of options relating to export restrictions or environmental changes in terms of process," she said.

The office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) did not return a request for comment by press time on the status of the GOP pipeline amendment. But Senate Republicans' third-ranked leader indicated today that denying a vote on Keystone XL could be as likely to bring down the transportation bill as allowing a vote on the project to succeed.

"There is lots of support on both sides for moving forward on the highway bill," Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said. But if Republicans are not allowed votes on their preferred amendments, including the XL-themed one, he added, "it's probably going to be pretty hard to get this thing going."