

Miles of pipe ready to become part of the Keystone Pipeline are stacked in a field near Cushing, Okla. (Sue Ogrocki/Associated Press)

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Sunday that the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline may rest on one or two votes in the Senate.

Speaking on CNN's "State of the Union," Durbin said President Obama will probably veto the vote if it passes. But whether it does hinges on the smallest of margins.

"It's within a vote or two," said Durbin, who said he has tallied up support and opposition to the measure. "It appears it may succeed or fail on a procedural vote with one or two votes making a difference."

Durbin said Democrats appear to be one vote short of voting down the pipeline, whose construction was approved by the Republican-led House last week by a vote of 252 to 161.

And if it does pass the Senate, Durbin said that "every indication is that the president will veto" the measure. Last week, people familiar with the administration's thinking said Obama will most probably veto the bill should it make it to his desk.

At a news conference in Burma on Friday, Obama said he had “to constantly push back against this idea that somehow the Keystone pipeline is either this massive jobs bill for the United States or is somehow lowering gas prices.”

“It is providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land, down to the gulf, where it will be sold everywhere else,” he said. “That doesn’t have an impact on U.S. gas prices.”

Speaking on ABC's "This Week," Russ Girling, chief executive of TransCanada, the company that is applying for the permit to build the pipeline, said he thinks it will happen.

"I think there's a very high probability this pipeline gets built," Girling said. He said the project would fill a void in the U.S. oil market, which does not consume as much oil as it produces.

"The need for this pipeline continues to grow," he said.

Girling said the pipeline would provide tens of thousands of jobs and disputed that the vast majority would be temporary and that most of the oil would leave America's shores.