Murkowski doubts State Dept. process on Keystone XL

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) voiced doubts about the State Department’s abilities to successfully vet the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a task it has worked on for roughly five years.

{mosads}”Whether the State Department is the appropriate agency to vet cross-border pipelines is an important question to ask,” Murkowski said on Tuesday at an energy conversation hosted by the Brookings Institute.

Keystone XL has “definitely strained our relationship with Canada,” Murkowski added.

The ranking member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee went on to say that the U.S. can’t wait all day for more pipelines, forcing oil onto rail.

“We won’t be able to access reserves unless we are able to move it,” she said of booming oil supplies.

“And this is going to be our big challenge moving forward — all of the oil we have, all of the wind and sound that we have just sits there,” she added on the need to build a stronger infrastructure for all energy sources, including fossil fuels and renewables.