If by "political reasons", you mean climate change, then yes, Obama did indeed deny Keystone XL for the right reasons, as well he should have. 

It's interesting that a Globe editorial on pipelines does not even mention the words "climate change" anywhere in it, as if these two things are not connected. The Globe asserts that production from the oil sands is going to rise to 2030, so we supposedly need more pipelines, but somehow Canada's emissions are supposed to fall, dramatically, over that same period.