Political self-preservation focuses the mind, and there was no better recent example of this than Democrat Mary Landrieu who, in her fight for political survival next month, took up the running on a controversial environmental project ahead of an expected push from Republicans.

Landrieu is clinging on to her Louisiana Senate seat after being outpolled by Republican congressman Bill Cassidy in the midterm elections on November 4th. Neither achieved 50 per cent or more of the vote to win so there will be a run-off election on December 6th.

In some final-stretch jockeying to save her seat, the three-term senator took to the Senate floor last week within minutes of the chamber reconvening for its post-election lame-duck session to press for a project Republicans have wanted approved for more than six years – the Keystone XL pipeline running from Canada to Texas.

TransCanada’s proposed 2,700km pipeline, alongside President Barack Obama’s plans for executive action on immigration, is shaping up to be among the first battles to be waged between the president and Republicans since the GOP seized control of Congress in the midterms.

Long-running dispute The pipeline, an $8 billion project that would carry tar sands oil from Alberta to the g

ulf coast, has been at the centre of a long-running dispute between supporters who claim it will create thousands of jobs and environmentalists who say the sands are too toxic to refine.

Landrieu’s efforts to curry favour with voters in her oil-rich state were undermined by Republicans who had her opponent, Cassidy, sponsor a Bill in the GOP-led House of Representatives approving the pipeline. It passed the chamber by 252 votes to 161 on Friday.

This sends the Bill up to the Senate where the support of 15 Democrats is required to overcome a filibuster. A vote is expected this week. Democrats had previously shunned the pipeline but, given that the Republicans will control both the House and the Senate from January, some of the party’s senators, particularly senators from oil and energy states, are considering putting it to a vote, at the very least to improve Landrieu’s electoral prospects next month.

“I would characterise it as desperation,” said Ross Baker, professor of political science at Rutgers University, of Landrieu’s push.

Approving legislation to construct the pipeline would take the project out of the president’s control. Obama has adopted a wait-and-see approach, wanting to see the outcome of a legal challenge from landowners in Nebraska, where the pipeline would run over an aquifer, and how a state department review concludes.

Broader goal The president

will also assess the project within his broader goal of combating climate change.

“My government believes that we should judge this pipeline based on whether or not it accelerates climate change or whether it helps the American people with their energy costs or their gas prices,” he said.

The vote in the Senate is likely to be tight and may run close to or reach the 60 votes required to send the Bill to the White House. It is unlikely to achieve the 67 votes needed to withstand a presidential veto.

From January, Mitch McConnell, the Republican senator from Kentucky, a big coal-burning state, will be calling the shots in Congress given that he is the next Senate majority leader. At a press conference the day after the midterms he identified the administration’s climate-change measures and Environmental Protection Agency regulations as key targets in the Republican crosshairs during the 114th Congress.

He said his top priority was to “try to do whatever I can to get the EPA reined in”. He outlined plan to stop the agency from regulating carbon emissions at coal-burning power plants and to fight back on what he claims is the Obama administration’s “war on coal”.

Votes to approve more energy projects and roll back environmental regulations will come early and often in the Republican-led Congress but the chances of them going beyond Obama’s desk appear remote.

“This is a marquee issue for the administration,” said David Goldston, director of government affairs at the Natural Resources Defence Council, an environmental advocacy group.

“It is one where the public has been moving more and more in the direction of supporting action. It is not clear what they can get through the Senate but the president would surely veto any attempts to roll back his efforts on climate change.”

Presidential veto The White House has stopped short of saying whether

Obama would veto a Keystone Bill – he has only vetoed two Bills, both early on in his presidency. (He has the fewest vetoes of any president since James Garfield, who held office for just six months in 1881.)

One of Obama’s most senior advisers, Valerie Jarrett, told MSNBC on Thursday: “We’ve always taken a dim view of the legislative approach.”

“If he does veto it, however, we aren’t finished,” said John Hoeven, a Republican senator from North Dakota who co-sponsored a Keystone Bill with Landrieu this year. “We’ll pass it as either part of a broader energy legislation or as an amendment to another must-pass Bill.”

Obama’s historic agreement with China last week on carbon emission targets has raised optimism that a global treaty can be agreed next year, which would be a major achievement for the president’s legacy.

At home, combating climate change will be one of his harder-fought battles in his final two years in office. The next Congress is likely to see lively contributions from the next chair of the Senate environmental committee, Oklahoma’s James Inhofe, a senator who has called global warming a “hoax” and the EPA as a “Gestapo bureaucracy”.

Expect plenty of flashpoints over climate change and the environment over the coming months.