WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump moved to advance construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines Tuesday, a pair of projects that were blocked by the Obama administration due in part to environmental concerns. Both orders are subject to renegotiations of the agreements.
Trump also signed a notice requiring the materials for the pipelines to be constructed in the United States, though it was unclear how he planned to enforce the measure.
“From now we are going to start making pipelines in the United States,” Trump said from the Oval Office.
The executive order from Trump on the Keystone XL pipeline would reverse a major decision by President Barack Obama, who said that the project would contribute to climate change because it would carry tar sands crude which is especially greenhouse gas intensive because of the energy it takes to extract the thick crude.
The orders would have an immediate impact in North Dakota, where the pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners wants to complete the final 1,100-foot piece of the 1,172-mile pipeline route that runs under Lake Oahe. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe and other Native American groups have been protesting the project, which they say would imperil their water supplies and disturb sacred burial and archaeological sites. The Army Corp of Engineers called a halt to the project in December to consider alternative routes. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity so they could discuss details that have not been made public.
TransCanada, the Calgary-based project owner, has said it would be interested in reviving the pipeline.
Speaking to reporters Monday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the president supported energy projects “like Dakota and the Keystone Pipeline, areas that we can increase jobs, increase economic growth, and tap into America's energy supply more, that's something that he has been very clear about.”
Referring to comments Trump has made during the campaign and after the election, “He was talking about that being a big priority. That's one of those ones where I think that the energy sector and our natural resources are an area where I think the president is very, very keen on making sure that we maximize our use of natural resources to America's benefit.”
“It's good for economic growth, it's good for jobs, and it's good for American energy,” Spicer added.
As news of the move surfaced Tuesday morning, oil industry officials hailed it as overdue.
“Making American energy great again starts with infrastructure projects like these that move resources safely and efficiently,” said Stephen Brown, vice president of federal government affairs at Tesoro Companies.
Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts praised Trump's action and said years of environmental reviews have shown that Keystone XL complies with federal safety and environmental standards.
"Keystone XL will create good-paying jobs for Nebraska workers and bring property tax relief to counties along the route,” Ricketts said in a statement. “With the federal approval process complete, state regulators must now work through the process in Nebraska to conduct their own thorough consideration of the project."
Environmentalists, by contrast, vowed to continue to fight the two pipelines.
A leading pipeline opponent, Jane Kleeb, now the executive director of the four-state Bold Alliance, said Tuesday that even if Trump somehow grants approval to the Keystone XL pipeline, the project doesn't have an approved route through Nebraska and cannot use eminent domain until September.
The approval process for a route through the Nebraska Public Service Commission would take up to a year, Kleeb said, "and that doesn't even inject all the grass-roots actions and civil disobedience" that would erupt. Any attempt to force landowners to grant right of way to the pipeline developer, TransCanada, would be met with a lawsuit challenging the use of public eminent domain power for a private company.
Kleeb said she is awaiting details on the exact form of the executive order contemplated by Trump.
She said that Trump made a campaign promise that he would not allow the Keystone XL pipeline unless 25 percent of the profits went to the U.S., so Kleeb questioned if the president had cut some kind of deal.
TransCanada Corp. first submitted an application for Keystone XL in 2008. The company's 1,179-mile pipeline was to carry mostly heavy Canadian crude, called bitumen, to a transfer station near Steele City, Nebraska. From there, existing pipelines could carry the oil to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast.
As for the Dakota Access project, she said that since only a small portion of the pipeline has not been built, and because that pipeline does not cross a U.S. border and carries only U.S. oil, there are fewer hurdles to restart that project.
Trump's action is not the final word on the pipelines, opponents said.
“These pipelines are far from being in the clear,” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in a statement. “The millions of Americans and hundreds of tribes that stood up to block them in the first place will not be silenced, and will continue fighting these dirty and dangerous projects.”
Brune said the Keystone XL pipeline was rejected because it wasn't in the country's interest, and an environmental review of the Dakota Access pipeline was ordered because its potential threat.
“Nothing has changed,” he said. “These pipelines were a bad idea then and they're a bad idea now.”