President Donald Trump signed a presidential permit on March 29 to approve the Keystone XL pipeline project. The new permit supersedes the permit the president signed in 2017.
The presidential permit allows TransCanada Keystone Pipeline LP (the parent company of the project) to “construct, connect, operate and maintain pipeline facilities at the international border of the United States and Canada at Phillips County, Montana, for the import of oil from Canada to the United States.”
TransCanada thanked Trump in a statement for affirming his support for the Keystone XL project.
“President Trump has been clear that he wants to create jobs and advance U.S. energy security and the Keystone XL pipeline does both of those things,” said Russ Girling, TransCanada’s president and CEO. “We thank President Trump for his leadership and steadfast support to enable the advancement of this critical energy infrastructure project for North America.”
Girling added that the magnitude of the work on Keystone XL project has been extensive.
“The Keystone XL pipeline has been studied more than any other pipeline in history and the environmental reviews are clear,” he said, “the project can be built and operated in an environmentally sustainable and responsible way.”
The American Petroleum Institute (API) also applauded the president’s actions.
“We applaud the Administration for taking a no-nonsense approach to permitting this essential critical infrastructure project,” said API’s President and CEO, Mike Sommers. “The Keystone XL Pipeline has passed every environmental review conducted over the last decade under both the Obama and Trump administrations. Every study has concluded it can be built safely, with no significant impact to the environment.”
Multiple federal and state agencies have conducted numerous environmental reviews of the project since 2008, all of which have concluded that constructing KXL is in the national interest and does not pose significant environmental impacts, the API statement added. In addition, the project was approved by Congress in 2015 and the Nebraska Public Service Commission in 2017.