WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump greenlighted the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline on Friday, declaring it a “great day for American jobs” and siding with energy advocates over environmental groups in a heated debate over climate change.
The presidential permit comes nearly a decade after Calgary-based TransCanada applied to build the $8 billion pipeline, which will snake from Canada through the United States. Trump’s State Department said the project advances U.S. national interests, in a complete reversal of the conclusion President Barack Obama’s administration reached less than a year-and-a-half ago.
“It’s a great day for American jobs and a historic moment for North America and energy independence,” Trump said, standing alongside TransCanada’s CEO in the Oval Office. Keystone will reduce costs and reliance on foreign oil while creating thousands of jobs, he said, adding: “It’s going to be an incredible pipeline.”
The decision caps the long scientific and political fight over a project that became a proxy battle in the larger fight over global warming. And Friday’s decision, while long foreshadowed by Trump’s public support for Keystone, represents one of the biggest steps to date by his administration to prioritize economic development over environmental concerns.
TransCanada, Trump said, can now build Keystone “with efficiency and with speed.” Though it still faces other major hurdles, including disputes over the route, the president said the federal government was formulating final details “as we speak.”
The 1,700-mile (2,735 kilometers) pipeline, as envisioned, would carry oil from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. It would move about 800,000 barrels of oil a day.
Environmentalists, Native American groups and landowners who’ve opposed Keystone expressed outrage, and Greenpeace said the U.S. was “moving backwards” on climate and energy policy. “Keystone was stopped once before, and it will be stopped again,” vowed Annie Leonard, the group’s U.S. director.
How many jobs Keystone will create is also widely disputed.
TransCanada promised as many as 13,000 construction jobs and Trump once predicted it “could be 42,000 jobs.” The vast majority would be “indirect” jobs other industries gain from the influx of dollars and construction workers. Other estimates predict just a few thousand jobs, lasting only for the few years the pipeline is being built. And after that, only a few dozen workers would be needed to maintain the pipeline. TransCanada CEO Russ Girling said Friday that thousands of people are “ready and itching to get to work.”
Trump boasted as recently as this week that Keystone would be built with American steel. But his administration has already given Keystone a pass. TransCanada has already acquired the steel for the project, and the White House has said it’s too difficult to impose Trump’s requirement on a project already under construction.