President Obama on Thursday will call for expediting construction of the southern segment of the Keystone XL pipeline, according to a White House official.

Obama will press for fast-tracking construction of only the southern segment of a pipeline that is part of the larger controversial proposal by TransCanada that would stretch from northwest Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. While the State Department blocked permitting of the entire project earlier this year, the White House late last month expressed support of TransCanada's plan to move forward with building the southern segment from Cushing, Okla., to the Gulf of Mexico.

While visiting Cushing on Thursday as part of a trip to promote his energy policy, Obama will reiterate the administration stance that expediting construction of the southern segment will help relieve a "bottleneck of oil" and bring domestic resources to market, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the president has yet to speak on the matter.

Republicans have criticized Obama for blocking a trans-national pipeline that would bring tar sands oil from Canada through the United States.

In January, Obama rejected permitting of the pipeline after House Republicans forced him to make a decision on the project as part of a deal for a short-term extension on the payroll tax. At the time, Obama said that his decision was not on the merits of the project, but because the GOP was pressing an arbitrary deadline that prevented the State Department from properly studying the project.

Late last year, the State Department announced it would explore a new route for the pipeline and pushed a final decision on the controversial project past the 2012 election after a wave of protest from environmentalists and some Republican lawmakers from Nebraska who said that the original proposed route cut too close to the Ogallala aquifer.

Republicans have charged that Obama was putting politics ahead of jobs and the nation's energy security by rejecting the pipeline.

House Speaker John Boehner's spokesman Brendan Buck questioned Obama's motives for weighing in on the matter now.

"Only a desperate administration would inject the president of the United States into this trivial matter," Buck said in a statement. "The president's attempt to take credit for a pipeline he blocked and personally lobbied Congress against is staggering in its dis-ingenuousness. This portion of the pipeline is being built in spite of the president, not because of him.'"