WASHINGTON • House Speaker John Boehner says President Barack Obama is breaking his promise to create jobs by rejecting a plan to build an oil pipeline from Canada to Texas.

Boehner says Republicans will keep fighting for the Keystone XL pipeline because the project is good for the U.S. economy because it would create thousands of jobs.

The president says he's turning down the project not because it isn't worthy, but because of what he calls an arbitrary Feb. 21 deadline he was given by Congress to make a decision. The deadline was set by a GOP-written provision as part of a tax bill that Obama signed into law just before Christmas.

The president says in a statement that he's disappointed that Republicans in Congress forced the decision. Obama had until late next month to decide whether the pipeline was in the national interest.

Administration officials says the looming deadline cut short the time needed to conduct environmental reviews after the State Department ordered the project developer to find an alternate route to avoid environmentally sensitive areas of Nebraska.

The 1,700-mile pipeline would carry oil from tar sands in western Canada to refineries in Texas. It would pass through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.