KEYSTONE UR:

White House officials Monday welcomed plans by TransCanada to reapply for the Keystone XL pipeline and showed support for the Canadian company's aims to build the southern portion of the controversial pipeline as a standalone project. [...]

White House Press secretary Jay Carney announced President Barack Obama backed the separate project.

"As the President made clear in January, we support the company's interest in proceeding with this project, which will help address the bottleneck of oil in Cushing that has resulted in large part from increased domestic oil production, currently at an eight year high," Carney said. "Moving oil from the Midwest to the world-class, state-of-the-art refineries on the Gulf Coast will modernize our infrastructure, create jobs, and encourage American energy production."

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