The Environmental Protection Agency has given President Barack Obama a good reason to deliver on his promise to veto construction of the controversial $8 billion Keystone XL pipeline if adds to the greenhouse gas pollution that causes climate change—because, according to an assessment by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), that is exactly what it will do.

On February 2, the EPA released its comments on the Department of State’s environmental analysis of the Keystone XL pipeline, confirming that the project would indeed boost greenhouse gas emissions. Back in 2013, Obama had promised to veto the controversial pipeline project if there were evidence that it would unleash an appreciable amount of climate-changing carbon.

RELATED: Obama: No Keystone XL if It Increases Carbon Emissions

The State Department was tasked with performing an environmental study because the proposed pipeline would cross the international border between Canada and the United States to deliver Alberta’s tar sands oil more than 1,700 miles to Texas for refining and then to the Gulf of Mexico to be shipped to the world market. The EPA is authorized under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Clean Air Act to review environmental analyses performed by other agencies and departments.

Also because of the international nature of the project, the president has the final authority to approve or deny the project to the Canada-based developer, TransCanada Corporation.

Developing the Canadian oil sands crude that the Keystone XL pipeline would transport “represents a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions” compared to other types of oil, the EPA said. Emissions from extraction, transport, refining and use of the 830,000 barrels a day that Keystone could transport at full capacity would add 1.3 to 27.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year into the atmosphere.

“To put that in perspective, [that] is equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from 5.7 mi l lion passenger vehicles or 7.8 coal fired power plants,” the EPA said in its report. “Over the 50-year lifetime of the pipeline, this could translate into releasing as much as 1.37 billion more tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”

Additionally, low oil prices combined with a pipeline delivery system could stimulate more development of Canada’s oil market, the EPA said. The State Department’s analysis, which was submitted in January 2014, found that at the then current oil price of $65-$75 a barrel, construction of the pipeline was projected to result in increased oil sands production, with the accompanying greenhouse gas emissions, above what would otherwise occur.

“Given recent large declines in oil prices and the uncertainty of oil price projections, the additional low price scenario … should be given additional weight during decision making, due to the potential implications of lower oil prices on project impacts, especially greenhouse gas emissions,” the EPA said.

The Senate voted 62–36 on January 28 to approve construction of Keystone XL. Nine Democrats joined 53 Republicans to pass the bill, but the vote fell short of the 67 required to overcome a presidential veto. The Democrats who support Keystone are senators Michael Bennet, Colorado; Tom Carper, Delaware; Bob Casey Pennsylvania; Joe Donnelly, Indiana; Heidi Heitkamp, North Dakota; Joe Manchin, West Virginia; Claire McCaskill, Montana; Jon Tester, Montana, and Mark Warner, Virginia.

RELATED: Senate Passes Keystone; Obama Promised Veto

The House of Representatives is scheduled to take up the Senate bill on Tuesday February 10, then send it to Obama, who is expected to veto it. The Keystone XL pipeline is opposed throughout Indian country, as well as by environmentalists.

“The bill will approve a pipeline that will send tar sands oil through traditional tribal lands and the Mni Wiconi Rural Water Project, which provides the drinking water for the Oglala Sioux Tribe, Rosebud Sioux Tribe and Lower Brule Sioux Tribe,” said Tara Houska (Couchiching First Nation), a tribal rights attorney in the Washington D.C. office of Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Walker LLP, as well as a founding member of NotYourMascots.org. “The irony of the federal government’s spending nearly half a billion dollars on the still incomplete Mni Wiconi Project to provide reservations with clean drinking water but now voting to place a tar sands pipeline through the Project’s watershed is not lost.”

RELATED: Houska: Taking from Indians Is a Time-Honored American Tradition

Danielle Droitsch, Canada Project director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, issued this statement in response to the EPA comments.

“The EPA’s assessment is spot-on. There should be no more doubt that President Obama must reject the proposed pipeline once and for all,” Droitsch said. “If built, it would transport Canadian tar sands oil – the dirtiest fuel on the planet – through America’s heartland, only to be refined and then shipped abroad. The pipeline would threaten our waters, our lands and turbo-charge climate pollution. It’s absolutely not in our national interest.”