From yesterday’s White House press briefing:

White House spokesman Jay Carney Tuesday defended President Obama’s oil policy and said Republicans are playing politics with the Keystone XL pipeline project.

Asked his reaction to congressional Republicans’ pressing legislation that would require Obama to approve the Canada-to-Gulf of Mexico oil pipeline project before he could tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as he did last summer, Carney said Republicans had “essentially forced” the president to hold up the permitting process by insisting on a time frame that made it “impossible to appropriately approve the pipeline.”

“There wasn’t even an alternate route proposed yet through Nebraska. An alternate that was deemed necessary based on the request of many in Nebraska, including the Republican governor,” Carney said. “So the fact that the process had ended the way it did in terms of that permit request is wholly the responsibility of the Republicans who insisted on playing politics with the payroll tax cut extension back at the end of last year.”

Who knew we were so anti-energy?