President-elect Joe Biden plans to issue an executive order canceling the Keystone XL pipeline permit, report says
Category: News & Politics
Via: john-russell • 3 years ago • 5 commentsBy: jgerstein@businessinsider.com (Julie Gerstein) 10 hrs ago (MSN)
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© Reuters People protest against President Donald Trump's executive order fast-tracking the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines in Los Angeles. Reuters
- President-elect Joe Biden will issue an executive order on his first day in office to rescind the Keystone XL pipeline project.
- The Keystone XL is part of a multi-phase construction project aimed at creating a direct oil pipeline to the US from the oil sands of Alberta.
- President Barack Obama had previously rejected the project because of the environmental threat the pipeline would create to native species and lands.
- President Donald Trump fought during his term to get the project in gear, but had little success in countering US court rulings on it.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
President-elect Joe Biden plans on canceling the controversial Keystone XL pipeline permit via executive order on his first day of office, sources told CBC News.
According to CBC, the order was part of a larger planned list of executive actions meant to reverse some of President Donald Trump's key policies. They include re-joining the Paris Climate Accord and reversing the Muslim travel ban Trump instituted in his first days in office. Biden also plans on instituting a 100-day mask-wearing mandate.
"These executive actions will deliver relief to the millions of Americans that are struggling in the face of these crises," Ron Klain, Biden's incoming chief of staff, said in the memo released over the weekend seen by the AP. "President-elect Biden will take action - not just to reverse the gravest damages of the Trump administration - but also to start moving our country forward."
Insider has reached out to the Biden transition team for further comment.
The proposed Keystone XL pipeline has been in development for more than ten years, and was approved by the Canadian National Energy Board in 2010. As planned, it would be a 1,179-mile pipeline running from Alberta, Canada, to Nebraska, carrying more than 800,000 barrels of oil a day.
But the project failed to get off the ground during President Barack Obama's administration. Obama balked at the plan, arguing that the environmental devastation the pipeline would cause would be too high a price to pay.
Read more: At one end of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, there is a scene you must see to believe
"America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action on climate change," Obama said in 2015. "Frankly, approving that project would have undercut that global leadership, and that is the biggest risk we face: not acting."
When Trump entered office in 2017, he almost immediately revived conversation around the pipeline, fast-tracking the project because he said it would create nearly 30,000 US jobs, a number the Washington Post disputed at the time, and ABC News noted that the vast majority of those roles would be temporary.
Environmental lobbyists were able to successfully stanch the project for several years, and by 2020, enthusiasm for the project had begun to wane. In June 2020, Trump took the Keystone XL case to the Supreme Court to dispute a lower court ruling that prevented work on the pipeline to continue because of the environmental damage it was causing. The Supreme Court sent the case back down to the lower courts.
Read more: Keystone XL does not make sense.
The reported rescission of the Keystone XL permit is among several climate change-related changes Biden's team plans to make in the early days of his administration.
Jason Kenney, the premier of Alberta, said in a statement posted to Twitter he was concerned that rescinding the permit would "kill jobs on both sides of the border, weaken the critically important Canada-US relationship, and undermine US national security by making the United States more dependent on OPEC oil imports in the future."
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said that he would press for a continuation of the pipeline project with the new administration.
"It has been a long position of mine that we need to get our resources to new markets safely and securely, and that's why I've always advocated for the Keystone XL pipeline," Trudeau said in a May 2020 press conference.
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Biden's ambitious 100-day plan to erase Trump's legacy
President-elect Joe Biden is trying to get out of the gate running. Even before his Jan. 20 inauguration, Biden has announced a $1.9. trillion stimulus plan, a massive list of executive orders that will undo President Donald Trump's most controversial decisions, and an immigration reform proposal to provide a path to citizenship for 11 million people. Whereas Trump was most interested in building a wall, Biden hopes to build new communities of citizens.
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With Washington, DC in a state of military lockdown, the pandemic surging throughout the states, and a Senate impeachment trial looming, the President-elect is wasting no time.
As a veteran of national politics, Biden understands that the most valuable commodity for any new President is time. His sense of urgency is reminiscent of another highly experienced President with a deep resume on the Hill: Lyndon B. Johnson.
...Biden hopes to convey the same message at a moment of even greater urgency. Even with many Democrats wondering how he will make any progress as the Senate deals with the articles of impeachment and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell relies on the filibuster to obstruct, the President-elect won't be locked down.
Biden's goal is to reverse the damage that Democrats believe has been inflicted by Trump. Through executive action, he plans to end the travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries and rejoin the Paris climate accord on his first day in office. He will also do what Trump refused to do to fight the pandemic, including a mask mandate on federal property and interstate travel and working to reunite families separated at the US-Mexico border. Biden's stimulus plan would provide the kind of economic assistance to states and localities, $350 billion worth, that Republicans have blocked and move toward a bold immigration plan that undoes the era of restrictionism.
Unlike some other famous first 100 days, like FDR in 1933, Biden's plan primarily aims to reverse the direction of policy under his predecessor and stabilize society from the pandemic rather than setting out on a fundamentally new path that remakes public policy. Nonetheless, given the circumstances, the plan is extremely ambitious.
Besides executive orders and legislation, the biggest issue in the coming months is an implementation issue. There Biden has also shown he will not be passive. His incoming administration has promised to vaccinate 100 million people in 100 days. He is working to open new vaccine centers and has said he will use the Defense Production Act to ramp up the distribution of shots.
If Biden works on getting this agenda going, the Senate impeachment trial of Trump would not stifle Biden's first 100 days. With the Senate doing the heavy lifting, the trial and the vote will allow Democrats to achieve some measure of accountability. There is even some chance that a sufficient number of Republicans could break toward conviction.
More empty promises that can't be met. As I write this the Dem dimwit dumbass dummies have about ~50 hours to convict Trump before he becomes a private citizen
Excellent next up should be Dakota Access Pipeline.
Here we go again, with all the same lame excuses that will result in a slew of lawsuits. Who cares about energy independence.
The nation's more than 2.6 million miles of pipelines safely deliver trillions of cubic feet of natural gas and hundreds of billions of ton/miles of liquid petroleum products each year. They are essential: the volumes of energy products they move are well beyond the capacity of other forms of transportation. It would take a constant line of tanker trucks, about 750 per day, loading up and moving out every two minutes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to move the volume of even a modest pipeline. The railroad-equivalent of this single pipeline would be a train of 225, 28,000 gallon tank cars.