The Keystone XL Pipeline has been on the political radar screen for more than six years, but it finally had a vote on the Senate floor last week. It failed by just one vote, but another one may soon be scheduled.

Republicans, emboldened by their wins in the midterm elections earlier this month, will press forward soon to pass another through both the U.S. House and Senate. Last week, 14 Democrats hailing from the Midwest and South, which would benefit most directly from the pipeline, also voted in favor of the pipeline. It would require just one senator to change his or her mind to push the bill to the president’s desk.

If it does eventually pass Congress, it would put pressure on President Barack Obama to either veto it – and accept the political consequences for doing so – or allow Republicans to win one while losing the support of environmental groups and also go back on his professed desire to reduce carbon emissions and take action to combat climate change.

Here’s a look at the issues, with two truths and a lie:

TRUTH: Keystone XL pipeline would transport crude oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast.

The Keystone pipeline is a 1,179-mile-long, 36-inch-wide pipe that would deliver 35 million gallons of oil per day from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Nebraska. It would connect at Steele City to existing pipelines that head south to refineries on the Gulf Coast.

Because it crosses our national border, it would require a federal finding by the president that building it is in the national interest.

TRUTH: A lot of the Canadian crude is already making it into the U.S. and, eventually, finding its way into the atmosphere.

According to FactCheck.org, an unbiased information source created and funded by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, stopping the pipeline would not “prevent Canadians from extracting their crude and getting it to market to be burned, either in the U.S. or other countries.” The U.S. State Department’s report agreed with those findings.

Factcheck notes that much of the Canadian oil is already making its way across the border anyhow, through a more dangerous railroad route. Tank car capacity has grown considerably in the last decade, “though rail accidents spilled more oil in the U.S. last year than in all the previous years on record combined.” In addition, 47 people died in a fiery oil train disaster in Quebec last year.

Canada is moving forward on two other pipelines that would move oil west instead of south, to ports on the Pacific Coast. Another project would double the capacity of the existing, inefficient pipe that runs south into the United States.

LIE: Keystone pipeline is going to create thousands of job.

The American Petroleum Institute and backers of the pipeline have thrown out some pretty big numbers about how many jobs would be created by this pipe in the ground.

Nearly all of them have been greatly exaggerated.

According to the U.S. State Department and their most conservative estimate, roughly 4,000 people would be employed directly for about a year to construct the pipeline. Those jobs, of course, help spur indirect work for good and services companies and money spent by workers and suppliers.

The State Department estimated a total of 42,100 temporary jobs could be created and TransCanada seems to agree with that figure.

The long-term employment numbers are much smaller, however. Some say as few as 50 people could be employed to oversee the line, while the highly-researched Cornell report said it could be in the low hundreds.