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President-elect Donald Trump intends to revive the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office—just like President Biden shut it down on his first day in office.
A Politico report citing unnamed sources with knowledge of the situation said that the president-elect’s transition team was discussing Keystone XL with a view to bringing it back to life. “It’s on the list of things they want to do first day,” one of the Politico sources said.
The 1,200-mile pipeline, developed by TC Energy, was supposed to carry some 800,000 bpd of Canadian heavy crude to U.S. refineries. As proponents of the project have noted repeatedly in the past few years, the demand for these Canadian barrels did not die with Keystone XL. Canadian exports of heavy crude to the U.S. have remained high, and breaking records. Only the means of transporting them have changed from pipelines to oil trains.
“The U.S. decision to revoke the permit was unfair and inequitable,” TC Energy said in an arbitration filing back in 2021, with which it sought compensation for the losses it suffered from the cancelation of its project. The pipeline developer noted at the time that the United States had put Keystone XL on a 13-year “regulatory rollercoaster”.
The trade tribunal where TC Energy filed its demand for compensation, however, dismissed the claim, saying it had determined that TC Energy did not meet the necessary criteria to qualify for the damages it sought. The claim argued that the U.S. government’s decision to revoke the permit was unjust and had caused significant financial harm to the company. However, the tribunal found that the permit’s revocation was within the US’s rights and did not constitute a breach of NAFTA or USMCA provisions.
Since then, TC Energy has given up on Keystone XL and, according to Politico, the pipes that were already laid before the cancelation have been dug up and removed, meaning any new construction would likely have to begin pretty much from scratch.
