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The House went on record Friday to insist that lawmakers negotiating a transportation programs funding bill include approval of the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline.

The non-binding 261-152 vote signals support for the pipeline in the lower chamber, but also cuts the number of Democrats that Republicans can claim want Keystone in the transportation bill.

Twenty-six Democrats voted Friday for Rep. John Barrow’s (D-Ga.) motion to instruct negotiators to uphold the House language that authorizes the pipeline to bring Canadian oil sands to Gulf Coast refineries.

In April, 69 Democrats supported the House transportation bill – a tally that GOP leaders cite when urging inclusion of Keystone in any final House-Senate deal on a transportation package.

However, a number of Democrats said at the time that they voted for the bill as a way to enable negotiations to begin.

The Senate’s version of the transportation bill omits approval of the Keystone pipeline.

Enbridge Inc. kicked off one of the most sweeping expansions in its history on Wednesday, a $3.2 billion series of projects across its pipeline system aimed at moving western Canada and North Dakota oil to Eastern refineries and eliminating costly bottlenecks in the U.S. Midwest.

Enbridge, the largest transporter of Canadian oil exports, said C$2.6 billion worth of the new work would support a reversal in flow direction of a pipeline between Sarnia, Ontario, and Montreal to move Alberta oil sands and North Dakota Bakken shale oil to refineries that are now captive to foreign suppliers.

It would also spend about C$600 million expanding its mainline in Canada and the United States, which now moves more than 2 million barrels a day, to get more crude into the Chicago area for shipment South and East. Pending approval, the expansions could be in service in 2014, the company said.

These are the latest in a raft of proposals to open up new markets for oil sands-derived crude with production slated to nearly double this decade. Other initiatives involve moving large volumes to Texas via TransCanada Corp's controversial Keystone XL pipeline, and to Asia via Canada's West Coast on Enbridge's equally contentious Northern Gateway proposal.

TransCanada has also proposed moving Canadian crude to refineries in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime provinces by switching one of its natural gas pipelines to oil service.

"The timing is driven by what is really a pretty significant change and a very fast change in the supply and demand fundamentals on this continent," Al Monaco, Enbridge's president and incoming chief executive, told Reuters.

"Basically, you've got a massive increase in oil sands and shale oil volumes, which is totally different from just two years ago when people thought we were in decline. A lot of that increase is for light oil."

The surging supplies have led to a glut in the U.S. Midwest and Midcontinent regions and depressed prices for the North American oil against world crudes, chewing into corporate returns and the revenues of governments such as Alberta's.

Part of the aim with expansion of existing infrastructure is to avoid the lengthy regulatory reviews and environmental battles that have led to delays Keystone XL and Northern Gateway because there would be no need to acquire new rights-of-way across lands, Monaco said.

The new plans are in addition to Enbridge's expansions in the U.S. Gulf Coast region, including the reversal of the Seaway pipeline between Cushing, Oklahoma, and Texas, due to start draining off a glut of supply at the storage hub this month. Anticipation of that project has already helped to shrink the discount on North American crudes versus world benchmark Brent.

"That was existing pipeline and it allowed us to hit a window very quickly when the market wanted that capacity," Monaco said.

As part of new initiative, dubbed Eastern Access, Enbridge would expand a pipeline between Michigan and Ohio and reverse the flow of the 240,000 barrel a day Line 9 between Sarnia and Montreal back to the West-East direction it was initially designed for in the 1970s.

The company also said it will bolster the capacities of its Spearhead and Line 6B pipelines in the Midwest, currently the largest market for Canadian oil, to get more crude to Line 9.

Much the impetus for the push Eastward is a shift in demand for various crude crudes, said Steven Paget, analyst with FirstEnergy Capital Corp.

The retooling of some major U.S. refineries, including Phillips 66 and Cenovus Energy's Wood River, Illinois, plant and BP's Whiting, Indiana, facility, is creating large demand for Canadian heavy crude. They have added coking units that break the gooey oil down. The light oil they previously processed, meanwhile, is being displaced.

Those barrels will now be able to flow eastward to such plants as Suncor Energy's 130,000 barrel refinery in Montreal, which now runs more pricy imported oil, Paget said.

Americans just lived through the hottest 12 months ever recorded, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Tuesday.

The announcement came as NOAA reported that the U.S. also just experienced its third-warmest April on record. 

"These temperatures, when added with the first quarter and previous 11 months, calculate to the warmest year-to-date and 12-month periods since recordkeeping began in 1895," the agency reported.

NOAA said that for the period from May 2011 to April 2012, the averaged temperature was 55.7 degrees, 2.8 degrees higher than the 20th century average. The average temperature for April was 55 degrees, 3.6 degrees above average.

To be sure, the higher temperatures haven’t hit every region equally. The Pacific Northwest saw cooler-than-average temperatures over the past year, according to NOAA data.

But record averages for the year scorched central Texas — which saw a horrific drought last year — the upper Midwest, and much of the Northeast.

Heartland Institute was cut off by three more corporate donors on Monday, further isolating the ultra-conservative think tank from the mainstream business world.

The defections reinforce the sense of Heartland's isolation, ahead of its major climate contrarian conference in Chicago next week. A number of prominent speakers also pulled out of the conference after Heartland put up a billboard on a Chicago expressway suggesting believers in climate change were akin to serial killers.

In statements to advocacy groups, pharmaceutical giant Eli Llily, BB&T bank and PepsiCo confirmed they would not fund Heartland in 2012 – dealing a blow to the think tank's plans of building long-term relationships with major corporations.

The three were the latest in a rush of companies to distance themselves from Heartland after the ad campaign featuring Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.

"Lilly is not funding Heartland in 2012 and has no plans to do so in the future," David Marbaugh, communications director of Corporate Responsibility for Eli Lilly informed Forecast the Facts by email. "That type of ad is not consistent with how Lilly engages in public debate."

In purely monetary terms, Monday's defections will have very little effect on Heartland.

None of the three had contributed to Heartland in 2011, according to confidential documents obtained by the water scientist Peter Gleick, and released without the think tank's permission.

PepsiCo's contributions in 2010 amounted to only $5,000. Eli Lilly donated $25,000 in 2010 and BB&T $16,105.

However, they make it very difficult for Heartland to pursue its expansion plans for 2012 and disprove its efforts to project itself as a mainstream organization seeking to act as an honest mediator in debates over climate policy.

The Heartland budget and ambitious expansion plans for 2012 had been predicated on returning those donors to the fold. It had projected a $3m budget increase for 2012, based on those plans.

Specifically, Heartland had hoped to raise $1.5m or half of those funds from "lapsed" corporate donors like Eli Lilly.