By Rob Gillies
The Canadian company behind the Keystone XL oil pipeline said Wednesday it has suspended work on the pipeline in anticipation of incoming U.S. President Joe Biden revoking its permit.
Biden’s Day One plans included moving to revoke a presidential permit for the pipeline.
The 1,700-mile (2,735-kilometer) pipeline would carry roughly 800,000 barrels of oil a day from Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma.
“As a result of the expected revocation of the Presidential Permit, advancement of the project will be suspended,” the Calgary, Alberta-based company said in a statement.
First proposed in 2008, the pipeline has become emblematic of the tensions between economic development and curbing the fossil fuel emissions that are causing climate change. The Obama administration rejected it, but President Donald Trump revived it and has been a strong supporter. Construction already started.
Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, said Canada needs to move on now that Biden has made a decision.
“Of course we’re disappointed. We worked hard over the past number of months trying to make the case for Keystone XL," Hillman told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
“He had made a commitment during his campaign and he lived up to that commitment. I think we have to accept that and move forward.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau raised Keystone XL as a top priority when he spoke with Biden in a phone call in November. The project is meant to expand critical oil exports for Canada, which has the third-largest oil reserves in the world.
Jason Kenney, premier of the oil-rich province of Alberta, said late Tuesday he urged Trudeau to tell Biden that “rescinding the Keystone XL border crossing permit would damage the Canada-US bilateral relationship.”
Trudeau and Biden are politically aligned and there are expectations for a return to normal relations after four years of Trump, but the pipeline is an early irritant as Biden has long said he would cancel it.
Trudeau has tried to balance the oil industry’s desire for more pipelines with environmentalists’ concerns. He canceled one major pipeline to the Pacific coast from oil-rich Alberta, but approved another and instituted a national carbon tax.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris announced Thursday that the U.S. is investing more than $100 million in the Caribbean region to crack down on weapons trafficking, help alleviate Haiti’s humanitarian crisis and support climate change initiatives.
It is arguably the most perilous of multiple legal threats against the former president as he seeks to reclaim the White House.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris announced Thursday that the U.S. is investing more than $100 million in the Caribbean region to crack down on weapons trafficking, help alleviate Haiti’s humanitarian crisis and support climate change initiatives.
At Cleveland's Urban Kutz Barbershop, customers can flip through magazines as they wait, or help themselves to drug screening tests left out in a box on a table with a somber message: “Your drugs could contain fentanyl. Please take free test strips.”
President Joe Biden on Thursday condemned a wave of “cruel” and “callous” state legislation curbing the rights, visibility and health care access of LGBTQ+ people, while causing the community to feel under attack for being who they are.
Pat Robertson, a religious broadcaster who turned a tiny Virginia station into the global Christian Broadcasting Network, tried a run for president and helped make religion central to Republican Party politics in America through his Christian Coalition, has died. He was 93.
The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a surprising 5-4 ruling in favor of Black voters in a congressional redistricting case, ordering the creation of a second district with a large Black population.
Mike Pence opened his presidential bid with an unusually forceful critique of former President Donald Trump over Jan. 6, his temperament and abortion on Wednesday as he became the first vice president in modern history to challenge his former running mate.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie wasted no time going after Donald Trump while launching his presidential campaign on Tuesday, calling the former president and current Republican primary front-runner a “lonely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog" and arguing that he's the only one who can stop him.
Saying gender identity is real, a federal judge temporarily blocked portions of a new Florida law that bans transgender minors from receiving puberty blockers, ruling Tuesday that the state has no rational basis for denying patients treatment.
