Got questions about the Keystone XL oil pipeline? Don’t ask the White House.

Amid growing anticipation over the decision on the controversial project, the White House is swatting away reporters’ questions, directing them to the State Department, which is deep into a lengthy analysis of the pipeline.

The State Department is the ultimate decider on the pipeline, not the president, White House aides say.

“Again, this is a decision that’s housed within the State Department and made on the merits,” press secretary Jay Carney told reporters Thursday, reiterating his long-standing response to questions about Keystone.

The White House’s comments are both politically convenient and technically true but won’t protect President Barack Obama from the backlash that will come from the Keystone decision. The buck stops with him.

White House energy adviser Heather Zichal also made comments similar to Carney’s earlier this year.

“The reality is that it is the State Department, and they will pursue the process under the executive order to make a national interest determination,” she said during a February speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

A 2004 George W. Bush executive order gives the decision-making power on certain energy-related projects that cross international borders — in this case, Keystone — to the secretary of state.

After analyzing the project’s environmental impact and determining whether it is in the national interest, the secretary can issue a final verdict on the pipeline unless any of eight consulting agencies disagrees. In that case, the decision would be bumped up to the president, according to a State Department official.

The executive order may help provide some political cover for Obama, who has faced intense political pressure from the oil industry and environmental groups over the fate of the pipeline. But ultimately, even if the decision is technically made by Secretary of State John Kerry, those following the issue say the president is still going to take the heat.

“The White House can’t have it both ways. They can’t get credit from environmentalists for EPA regulations, for example, and then feign detachment from the Keystone decision,” said former Clinton White House climate aide Paul Bledsoe, a senior energy fellow at the German Marshall Fund.

“While various departments and agencies have technical authority over regulatory decisions on major political matters, the White House always makes the decision,” he added.

Recent polls have shown growing public support for the pipeline, despite a vigorous campaign by green groups to highlight the dangers of an oil spill and the risk of greenhouse gases from Canada’s tar sands. Earlier this week, a Gallup poll indicated that Americans largely continue to call the economy more important than the environment when the two clash, and Obama cited the need to balance those two policy goals at a fundraiser earlier this week.

White House aides have long said the decision will be based on the technical merits of the project, not politics. And they note that it is common practice for press aides to refer questions to the agency in charge of a project.

But vocal opponents of the project say they are prepared to hold Obama accountable for the decision on the pipeline, which would carry crude extracted from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, to refineries in Texas.
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“The president cannot avoid blame or praise for denying Keystone XL, just like he can’t avoid blame for when a tar sands and benzene spill happens in the heartland,” Jane Kleeb, the executive director of anti-Keystone group Bold Nebraska, wrote in an email.

“Farmers and ranchers know it’s not if — but when a tar sands spill destroys their land and leaves their water polluted — and all fingers will be pointed directly at the president if he approves this risky export pipeline,” she added.

Kleeb said her group is going to keep the pressure on Obama to reject the project with a new television ad that will run in Nebraska during the State Department’s April 18 hearing on the project.

Obama suggested in 2011 that he would make the final decision on the Keystone pipeline.

The State Department “will be giving me a report over the next several months and, you know, my general attitude is: What is best for the American people? What’s best for our economy both short term and long term? But also, what’s best for the health of the American people?” the president said during a November 2011 interview with a local Nebraska television station.

Shortly after Obama made those comments, the State Department announced it would delay a final decision on the pipeline until after the 2012 election. Obama did ultimately weigh in on the pipeline, but only after Republicans forced his hand. He rejected the project in January 2012, saying the decision was not based on the merits of the pipeline but on a GOP-backed provision in a broader bill that required him to come to a verdict within 60 days.