Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman slammed President Obama on Thursday, saying he is “making mistakes” when it comes to U.S. energy policy.
“I want to say I’m very disappointed,” Mr. Heineman said in an interview with Politico. “I think the president made a mistake.”
The Nebraska Republican criticized the Obama administration, saying a number of policies have eliminated job growth in the U.S., including Wednesday’s announcement that a controversial Keystone XL pipeline project will not go forwards.
“Really what he was saying in denying the permit was ‘no’ to American jobs and ‘yes’ to a greater dependence on Middle Eastern oil,” he added. “We want to put America back to work.”
Mr. Heineman and Republican lawmakers in Nebraska last year called for TransCanada Corp. to reroute the pipeline around the environmentally sensitive Sand Hills region of Nebraska, a porous plot of land that sits above the Ogallala aquifer, which provides water to much of the Great Plains. Republicans noted at the time that they were not opposed to the pipeline; they simply wanted it rerouted.
Mr. Heineman’s statement comes as one of the reasons the Obama administration’s State Department gave for rejecting the project was that Nebraska had yet to determine where the pipeline would run. Officials from Nebraska’s Department of Environmental Quality said TransCanada has yet to submit a proposed rerouting.
