The Keystone XL Pipeline was scrapped by the previous administration.
President Donald Trump said he wants the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport crude oil from Canada to the United States, built as soon as possible, years after the previous administration scrapped the project.
“The company building the Keystone XL Pipeline that was viciously jettisoned by the incompetent Biden Administration should come back to America, and get it built – NOW!” Trump wrote in a post on his social media network, Truth Social, on Feb. 24.
The president said his administration is “very different” than the previous one, adding that he would promise “easy approvals” and an “almost immediate start” to the project.
“If not them, perhaps another Pipeline Company,” Trump said. “We want the Keystone XL Pipeline built!”
Construction of the 1,200-mile pipeline started in 2010 and was meant to carry oil sands crude from Canada to the interior United States.
The Keystone XL pipeline was expected to carry 830,000 barrels per day of crude oil from Alberta’s oil sands to Nebraska, but the project was delayed due to opposition from U.S. landowners, Native American tribes, and environmentalists.
Opponents of the pipeline, including environmentalist groups, had fought its construction for years by arguing it was unnecessary and would hamper the U.S. transition to alternative forms of energy.
It was first rejected by President Barack Obama in 2015. Trump in his first term attempted to resurrect the project but it was stymied by lawsuits.
The project was ultimately blocked by the Biden administration just hours after Joe Biden took office as president in January 2021, leading to thousands of lost jobs. When it was canceled, officials in Canada said they were disappointed by the decision. Then-Alberta Premier Jason Kenney released a statement in 2021 saying his office was “disappointed and frustrated” by the project’s cancellation.
Biden said that it was canceled as part of a commitment to “advance environmental justice” and argued that it would “not serve the U.S. national interest,” citing an analysis carried out under the Obama administration.
“The analysis further concluded that approval of the proposed pipeline would undermine U.S. climate leadership by undercutting the credibility and influence of the United States in urging other countries to take ambitious climate action,” Biden’s 2021 executive order stated.
After Biden’s order, Republican congress members, including then-GOP leadership member Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), said the cancellation of the project killed thousands of U.S. jobs. Two years later, the Biden-era Department of Energy released a report conceding that canceling the project led to the loss of thousands of jobs.
