The Keystone oil pipeline infrastructure in North Dakota.Reuters
Mark your calendars. June 1 is the newest date floated as the "rational" deadline by which U.S. President Barack Obama needs to say 'Yay' or 'Nay' to Keystone XL – the controversial and long-delayed pipeline that would send upwards of 830,000 barrels of Canadian oil sands crude to U.S. refineries close to Gulf Coast ports.
Guessing about decision date on Keystone has make Beltway insiders look foolish for half a decade.
But the June 1 date isn't just a wild guess and it comes, not from a Washington insider, but from Rob Merrifield, an Alberta MP who watches this file more closely than most and has been tabbed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper as a point person in relations with the United States Congress.
The Conservative from Yellowhead was on Capitol Hill last week, pitching Canadian concerns and taking the pulse of Congress where mid-term election campaigning is already in full frenzy.
"If the decision is not made by the first of June then there is no rational reason why not and that would not bode well for a positive decision," Mr. Merrifield said.
The June 1 date – give or take a few weeks – roughly matches an emerging conventional wisdom about the political fate of the $5.4-billion project. In Canada, Keystone XL is seen mostly as a means of getting higher prices for Alberta's remote oil sands that would, in turn, unlock the finances needed to mine more of the vast bitumen reserves. In the U.S., it's increasingly regarded as a litmus test of the President's professed concerns about climate change.
The way Mr. Merrifield hears it, the President has made a commitment to decide soon after the 'comment period' closes in early May. That timeline emerged after Mr. Obama met with Republican governors in February and – reportedly – told them he expected to make a decision within a few months.
Various versions of just what the President told the governors and whether it's worth relying on have surfaced.
Mr. Obama said a decision was coming "one way or another in a couple of months," Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin said at the time.
"We've heard this before," added a skeptical Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, while his Texan neighbour Rick Perry said: "The President is going to approve the XL pipeline …. just write it down. … there is no defending not opening the XL pipeline."
No surprise that all three represent places where oil matters and pipelines are good, almost by definition.
So too, of course, does Mr. Merrifield.
But the Alberta Conservative also understands that the Keystone decision isn't just about oil or energy security or whether the oil sands crude would mostly be exported or even whether extracting the vast reserves would exacerbate global warming.
"In the Senate, it's a mid-term issue," he said after a Washington visit for meetings with several U.S. senators as well as the North Border caucus, a bipartisan Congressional group that focuses on Canada-U.S. trade and security issues.
Mr. Merrifield said he'd prefer that the President made the Keystone decision solely on its merits – meaning of course the merits that are paramount to its promoters, like continental energy security and markets for Canadian oil. But the former chair of the Canada-U.S. interparliamentary group is savvy enough to know that decisions in Washington, as in Ottawa, are often made in terms of their political merits too.
"As politicians we weigh these things and how they play on the ground," he said, adding: "There's no question that there are some very nervous senators heading into mid-terms if the issue (Keystone XL) is still on the table."
At least two incumbent Democrats facing tough re-election battles – Alaska's Mark Begich and Louisiana's Mary Landrieu – might be helped by a green light on Keystone XL.
In Montana and South Dakota, Republicans hope to add two more Senate seats where Democratic incumbents have retired or moved on. Keystone XL runs through both states.
"The President has an opportunity to get it off the table," Mr. Merrifield said.
Except that the political calculus isn't simple. Some pundits doing the mid-term math don't believe a 'Yes' on Keystone XL would help enough – and perhaps not at all – to get Ms. Landrieu or Mr. Begich re-elected and won't matter sufficiently in Montana or South Dakota either.
Obamacare and the President's own miserable approval ratings, especially in states he lost in 2012 where Democrat senators are fighting for their political lives eclipse Keystone XL as a voting issue.
Getting out the vote, mobilizing the army of the young and the still-hopeful of change which was crucial to Mr. Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012 may be more important politically that any decision – yes or no – on Keystone XL before November.
Paul Koring is a reporter in The Globe's Washington bureau.