“Don't Count on a Revival of Keystone XL” DAVID BLACKMON
“It was even worse that he took that action despite the fact that Trans-Canada had already spent over $3 billion building much of the project with hundreds of miles of pipe already in the ground…”
Don't Count on a Revival of Keystone XL
NOV 22
∙
PAID
Joe Biden has served as the face of perhaps the single most destructive presidency in American history. Which is saying a lot considering the presidencies of Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all preceded Biden’s time in office.
But it’s the truth, and a pretty unarguable truth at that. Even as a lame duck in his waning days in office, Biden continues to do his best to start WWIII by allowing Ukraine to fire US long-range missiles into Russia and approve its use of US-made anti-personnel landmines as a kicker.
From causing runaway inflation to maintaining an open border to promoting all forms of woke ideology, one would be hard pressed to identify any 4-year or 8-year presidency in this nation’s history that has done so much damage to the American psyche or its position in the world.
Nowhere has the Biden regime wrought more damage than in the realm of energy and climate policy.
Of all the destructive actions Joe Biden took related to energy policy during his four years in office, his stroke-of-a-pen decision to cancel the cross-border permit for the Keystone XL pipeline system as a political payoff to his environmentalist campaign funders on his first day in office was perhaps the worst.
It was bad enough that Biden took that action to cancel the $8 billion project absent any finding that operator Trans-Canada (now TC Energy) was in violation of any law or regulation of the United States.
Worse still are the realities that, along with cancelling the project, Biden canceled as many as 10,000 high-paying American jobs during the construction of the project, left America more dependent on oil imports from hostile nations like Venezuela and Iran due to lost imports from Canada, and even cost the province of Alberta an estimated $1.3 billion it stood to gain from the project’s completion.
But the most damaging impact of all emanating from Biden’s craven act of crony politics was the loss of trust in the consistent, fair application of American law and regulations it caused. The cancellation of Keystone XL made it vastly harder for big companies to secure financing for big projects that take years to permit and develop because funders could no longer assume US laws would be applied based on merit rather than political fiat. That advantage over other parts of the world the US has always enjoyed was severely damaged.
This week, we saw a flurry of stories by major media outlets that the Trump transition team is working on plans to reverse Biden’s ill-considered order and try to revive the Keystone XL project. While that is certainly a laudable goal, developments that have taken place since 2021 will likely limit it to a purely symbolic act.
First, TC Energy no longer even owns the rights to the project or its remaining assets. Those assets, along with the rest of the previously existing Keystone Pipeline system, were spun off into a new entity named South Bow Energy in June of this year. A spokesperson for that company was reluctant to comment when asked about possible revival of Keystone XL, saying, “As a new company, our focus and priority at this point is to continue to deliver energy safely and efficiently. Part of South Bow’s long-term strategy is to grow our business.”
Second, a few months after Biden’s destructive action, TC Energy announced it had cancelled the project and would not be seeking to carry on the fight. As a result of the cancellation, TC Energy then removed the hundreds of miles of pipe that had already been installed into the ground so that it could be repurposed for use in other projects.
Third, the rights-of-way for the Keystone XL project are no longer in effect. Nor are the permits for the project. Thus, any effort to revive it by South Bow would necessitate a repetition of the painstaking, years-long process of reacquiring all those miles of rights-of-way and local, state, and federal permits.
This brings us back to the most damaging aspect of Biden’s political payback: Any such effort would without doubt extend into the next presidential term to begin in 2029. Who is going to be willing to commit billions of now-inflated dollars (thank largely to Biden and his team’s policies) to a pipeline project that might well end up being cancelled should voters decide to elect another Democrat to the presidency in 2028?
So, while the desire by the Trump team to restart Keystone XL is commendable, the facts on the ground almost certainly mean it would be a purely symbolic gesture.
This current presidency cannot end soon enough.