Keystone XL: Republicans want to bisect our country with a pipeline, bypass our laws and then bypass our citizens to send the oil abroad.

A Republican-backed bill giving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission power to approve TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL pipeline would remove two federal agencies from oversight, officials of the Interior Department and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said.

The Interior Department is responsible for monitoring construction and maintenance of pipelines on U.S. land, and the legislation makes FERC the “sole federal agency responsible for the project,” Mike Pool, deputy director of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, said today at a House subcommittee hearing in Washington. The Corps would lose its permitting authority for the pipeline, an official said.

The bill strips the Corps of Engineers of its role in reviewing and approving pipelines, Margaret Gaffney-Smith, chief of the Corps’ regulatory program, said at the hearing. It also poses jurisdictional and legal issues, officials from the State Department and FERC told the House subcommittee Jan. 25. FERC doesn’t have the authority to site oil pipelines.

Keystone XL will endanger Nebraska’s water supplies, and lead to oil exports.

House Democrats led by Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts today introduced a measure that would prevent exports of the crude transported by the pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf Coast.

“Other countries shouldn’t be allowed to bisect our country with a pipeline and then bypass our citizens to send the oil abroad,” Markey said in a statement.

The legislation “gives the pipeline an unprecedented regulatory earmark,” Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who has led opposition, said. It directs FERC to approve the pipeline “even though we don’t yet know what route it will take through the state of Nebraska.”

Koch Industries Inc. of Wichita, Kansas, may benefit from the pipeline’s construction, said Waxman, who criticized Republicans for not inviting company executives or officials from Calgary-based TransCanada to testify.