President Barack Obama said a decision on whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline is possible in weeks or months.

The president told Reuters in an interview Monday that the decision definitely “will happen before the end of my administration.” Asked to be specific, he said, “Weeks or months.”

The comments came after the president on Feb. 24 vetoed Republican-backed legislation that would have cleared the way for construction of the TransCanada Corp. project, which is opposed by many environmental activists and supported by business and labor groups.

In a series of local television interviews on Wednesday, Obama voiced skepticism over the pipeline that would carry crude oil from Alberta, Canada, to the U.S. Gulf Coast, saying it would not create many permanent American jobs.

“Unfortunately, the Keystone pipeline has been hyped a lot by the oil industry, but the fact of the matter is this is Canadian oil being shipped through the United States and creates approximately 250, 300 permanent jobs,” Obama told KMBC-TV in Kansas City.