Obama rejects Keystone XL pipeline

Washington — President Barack Obama announced on Friday that he had rejected the request from a Canadian company to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline, ending a seven-year review that had become a symbol of the debate over his climate policies.

Obama’s denial of the proposed 1,179-mile pipeline, which would have carried 800,000 barrels a day of carbon-heavy petroleum from the Canadian oil sands to the Gulf Coast, comes as he seeks to build an ambitious legacy on climate change.

“America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change,’’ Obama said in remarks from the White House. “And frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership.’’

The move was made ahead of a major U.N. summit meeting on climate change in Paris in December, when Obama hopes to help broker a historic agreement committing the world’s nations to enacting new policies to counter global warming. Obama has sought to telegraph to other world leaders that the United States is serious about acting on climate change.

The once-obscure Keystone project became a political symbol amid broader clashes over energy, climate change and the economy. The rejection of a single oil infrastructure project will have little impact on efforts to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, but the pipeline plan gained an outsize profile after environmental activists spent four years marching and rallying against it.

Republicans and the oil industry had demanded that the president approve the pipeline, which they said would create jobs and stimulate economic growth. Many Democrats, particularly those in oil-producing states such as North Dakota, also supported the project. In February, congressional Democrats joined in sending Obama a bill to speed approval of the project, which he vetoed.

A State Department analysis concluded that building the pipeline would support 42,000 temporary jobs over its two-year construction period and would create about 35 permanent jobs.