WASHINGTON – A new U.S. State Department report concludes that the Keystone XL pipeline will not significantly worsen climate change, marking a disappointment to pipeline foes. 

The Wall Street Journal writes that the report “triggers a final review to determine whether the pipeline is in the national interest,” which includes a 90-day comment followed by President Obama’s decision on whether to construct the pipeline. During that 90-day period, eight separate agencies will weigh in, “potentially injecting the pipeline issue into the midterm election season,” writes the newspaper.

The report found that the “approval or denial of any single project is unlikely to significantly affect the rate of extraction of the oil in the oil sands, or the refining of heavy crude on the U.S. gulf coast,” a State Department official told reporters on Friday.

A spokesman for TransCanada told WSJ late Thursday: "Fifteen thousand pages of scientific and technical study published in four environmental analysis reports since 2010 have all concluded this project would have minimal impact on the environment. We don't see how the final report would come to a different conclusion."