The Obama administration says it is indefinitely extending its long-awaited review of the Keystone XL pipeline — providing a Good Friday jolt to one of the president’s most wrenching environmental decisions.

The move could easily push President Barack Obama’s final decision past the November election.

The State Department declined to specify how long the delay will last, saying only that it needs to extend its review because of an ongoing dispute in front of the Nebraska Supreme Court that could affect the project’s route inside the state. “We are moving ahead very diligently with all the other aspects that are necessary for the national interest determination,” a senior State Department official told reporters on a conference call.

(Full POLITICO coverage of the Keystone XL decision)

But legal experts have said that the fight over the Nebraska route could drag out for a year or more.

Green activists mostly welcomed the news, with climate activist and billionaire Tom Steyer greeting it as “rotten eggs” for pipeline builder TransCanada and “good news on Good Friday for those who oppose Keystone as not being in our nation’s best interest.”

But the delay drew immediate scorn from pipeline supporters on both sides of the aisle in Congress. Republicans derided it as a “shameful” concession to “radical activists,” while Democratic Senate energy Chairwoman Mary Landrieu called it “irresponsible, unnecessary and unacceptable.”

Both of Alaska’s senators condemned the move. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the ranking member on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, called the delay “a stunning act of political cowardice,” and Democratic Sen. Mark Begich said he was “frankly appalled at the continued foot-dragging by this administration.” Begich, like Landrieu, faces a tough reelection fight this year.

(Sign up for POLITICO’s Morning Energy tip sheet)

TransCanada labeled the delay “inexplicable.”

Even some environmentalists were disappointed that the pre-holiday weekend news dump wasn’t a decisive win for their side.

“It’s disappointing President Obama doesn’t have the courage to reject Keystone XL right now, but this is clearly another win for pipeline opponents,” said Jamie Henn, spokesman for the climate activist group 350.org, which staged mass sit-ins outside the White House to protest the project. “We’re going to keep up the pressure on the President to make the right call.”

The Natural Resources Defense Council was much more positive, saying that waiting on the results of the court fight is “the most prudent course of action possible.”

“The newly extended comment period will show what we already know: the more Americans learn about this project, the more they see that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is not in the national interest,’’ the group said.

(PHOTOS: Keystone XL protest)

“Any day without the Keystone XL pipeline is a good day because it means more dirty tar sands crude stays in the ground where it belong,” said Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune.

The State Department has been in the middle of a 90-day review of whether the Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline would meet the U.S. national interest, which was scheduled to end in early May. The department insisted Friday that its process of reviewing the project and seeking advice from other agencies “is not starting over.”

“We felt that given that we’re a few weeks off from early May that we’d be in the best position to ask agencies to essentially do what they’ve been raising with us in our consultations, which is wait until they have an adequate foundation to make their judgments about the project,” the senior State Department official said.