White House Press Secretary Jay Carney (AP Photo/Caroyn Kaster(

(CNSNews.com) - President Obama is "committed to...an all-of-the-above approach" on domestic energy production, and he "didn't turn down the Keystone pipeline," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on Tuesday.

Carney was responding to a question about a Republican bill that would force Obama to approve construction of the pipeline before he can tap into the Strategic Petroleum reserve.

"I don't have reaction to a specific proposed piece of legislation," Carney told a White House press briefing. "I would simply point you to the actions that this president is taking to increase domestic oil production, increase domestic gas production, reduce our reliance on foreign sources of energy, and suggest to you that that's the right approach, and that this record…speaks for itself."

ABC News correspondent Jake Tapper asked Carney, "How can you say you have an all-of-the-above approach if the president turned down the Keystone pipeline?"

Carney responded: "But the President didn't turn down the Keystone pipeline.” He noted that the State Department was required to review TransCanada’s request because the proposed pipeline would cross an international boundary. And  he said objections from Nebraska needed to be taken into consideration:   

“There was a process in place with long precedent, run out of the State Department because of the issue of a pipeline crossing an international boundary, that required an amount of time for proper view after an alternate route was deemed necessary through Nebraska, at the request of the Republican governor of Nebraska and other stakeholders in Nebraska and the region, that needed to take its -- that needed to play out to be done appropriately.  You can't review and approve a pipeline, the route for which doesn't even exist."

In fact, the U.S. State Department spent three years studying TransCanada’s application for a permit to extend its oil pipeline from Alberta, Canada to refineries in the Gulf Coast.

The State Department was expected to make a decision by the end of 2011, but in November – suddenly citing objections from the State of Nebraska -- it said the decision would not come until 2013 – after the 2012 election.

“The decision was then made to delay approval, delay the process to allow for examination of alternate routes,” Carney said on Tuesday.

House Republicans, as part of their deal to support an extension of the payroll tax cut, objected to the delay of a jobs-producing project, so they set a new deadline of Feb. 21 for the Obama administration to make a decision on the Keystone XL project.

That deadline was written into a bill extending the payroll tax cut.

Carney said Republicans forced the president's hand by setting the February deadline "because they were looking for scalps, I guess."

"[T]hey decided to play politics with this decision and attach it to the payroll tax cut extension."

But Republicans insist it's President Obama who played politics by delaying a decision on the pipeline until after the 2012 election to avoid antagonizing environmentalists.

While environmental activists oppose construction of the pipeline, another Obama constituency -- labor unions -- strongly supports it.  By pleasing one group, Obama would have angered another.

In a written statement on Jan. 18, Obama said his decision to refuse a permit was “not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people.”

Pipeline supporters said three years was plenty of time for the State Department to gather information and make a decision.

House Speaker John Boehner accused President Obama of “selling out American jobs for politics.”