by Andrew Trunsky
President-elect Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that he would cancel a permit critical to the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
The move marks the second time that a Democratic administration has effectively killed the $8 billion project. While environmental and conservation groups praised the move, TC Energy, the company behind the pipeline’s construction, argued in an earlier Supreme Court brief that scrapping the project would strip 1,500 construction workers and 300 inspection and management workers of their jobs.
Biden’s executive order, which he is expected to sign on Wednesday, would revoke “permits signed over the past four years that do not serve the U.S. national interest, including revoking the Presidential permit granted to the Keystone XL pipeline,” the administration said.
But even though Biden’s order will halt its construction temporarily, the pipeline’s fate is still uncertain. TC Energy could challenge Biden’s order in court or through the U.S.M.C.A., like it did in 2015 after President Barack Obama first killed the project.
Despite the likely challenges in the future, environmentalists were quick to praise Biden’s move to scrap the 1,200-mile pipeline, which would have carried oil from western Canada to oil refineries throughout the Midwest and Gulf Coast.
“It’s been a decade long fight of working every single day,” said Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb when reports of Biden’s move first broke, crediting activists, local governments and tribal nations for not backing down in their opposition to the project.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday that he would ensure that those opposing the pipeline’s cancelation had their views heard and “considered by the incoming administration at the highest levels.” But he also acknowledged Biden’s commitment “made many months ago” to scrapping the project, and that its completion was unlikely as a result.
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Andrew Trunsky is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Keystone Pipeline” by shannonpatrick17. CC BY 2.0.
They told me if I voted for Trump we’d have an ignorant, biased, hate-mongering autocrat in the White House. Well, I did vote for Trump and it turns out they were right!
Biden is doing a lot of stuff purely out of spite for Trump and the American people. That oil will still get to American refineries, just by rail tankers owned by Warren Buffet.
Trudeau hated Trump and did everything he could to help get rid of him. I really don’t feel sorry for Canada at all, they got what they ask for.
And we are getting paid back for electing O’Biden!
Kill the pipeline and the risk of an oil spill increases exponentially. The same oil will be transported by railcar which has a much higher chance of an accidental spill.
Just a really dumb move to shut down the construction. The 1500 job losses are only from the construction crews and does not include potential job losses at the refineries and down stream industries.
I’m confused how shutting down the pipeline will positively affect the environment. Voodoo reasoning.
It’s like a cult with the Climate Change agenda. Their elite ruling class proponents run around from their multiple dwellings on private jets telling us to downsize, curtail our travels and condemn our “love of cheap gas and big cars”, as Obama said recently so we hand over control and money to the globalist banking cartel. CO2 is a “greenhouse gas” pollutant they say, but known science that we learn in Jr high teaches us it is an essential natural component of photosynthesis and the life cycle. If CO2 increases, the greening of our earth increases SBC produceing more O2 for sustaining our lives. These climate change cultists are dangerous idiots who are quite happy to destroy jobs and livelihoods to force everyone to bowdown at the altar of globalism.