Trump wastes no time to approve TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline

VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – US President Donald Trump on Friday issued a Presidential Permit, approving the construction of TransCanada’s long-delayed $8-billion Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline.

“TransCanada will finally be allowed to complete this long overdue project with efficiency and with speed. We're working out the final details as we speak. It’s a great day for American jobs and a historic moment for North America and energy independence,” Trump said in the White House’s Oval Office, flanked by TransCanada president Russ Girling.

The approval comes less than two months after Trump signed executive actions clearing the way for contentious oil pipelines to be built in the US, inviting TransCanada to reapply to the US Department of State for a Presidential Permit for the KXL pipeline. Trump billed the announcement as “part of a new era of American energy policy”.

First proposed in July 2008, the KXL was designed to link existing pipeline networks in Canada and the US to bring crude from Alberta and North Dakota to refineries in Illinois and, eventually, the Gulf of Mexico coast. The proposed project entails a 1 897 km, 36-inch-diameter crude oil pipeline, beginning in Hardisty, Alberta, Canada, and extending south to Steele City, Nebraska, in the US. The infrastructure project is seen as critical to narrowing the discount crude producers in the Alberta oilpatch receive over their southern rivals.

The project was stalled under former President Barrack Obama's administration, which had rejected the proposal on environmental grounds, prompting TransCanada to file a claim under Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement and challenge the US Constitution.

Girling said TransCanada will discontinue both actions, as it gets to work on securing outstanding permits in Nebraska, Montana and South Dakota to advance this project to construction.

In February, NYSE-listed Energy Transfer Partners received an easement from the US Army Corps of Engineers to build a pipeline across land owned by the Army Corps on both sides of Lake Oahe, in North Dakota. The release of the easement by the Army Corps follows a directive from Trump to the Department of the Army and the Army Corps to take all necessary and appropriate steps that would permit construction and operation of the Dakota Access pipeline, including easements to cross federal lands.