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President-elect Joe Biden will repeal the cross-border permit for TC Energy’s Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in agency, three sources confirm to POLITICO.
The move is billed as one of Biden’s Day One climate change actions, according to a exhibition circulating among Washington trade groups and lobbyists, a portion of which was encounter by POLITICO. The decision was not included in incoming chief of staff Ron Klain’s Saturday memo outlining Biden’s schemed executive actions during the first days of his presidency.
Two lobbyists reconfirmed that Biden plans to yank the project’s permit on Inauguration Day, new developments firstly reported by CBC News. It’s the latest development in a decade-long fight over the controversial pipeline and solidifies awareness-raising campaigns promise the Canadian government had hoped was negotiable.
“The only question has traditionally been whether labor can stave off the death penalty, ” said one oil and gas lobbyist who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the press. “And they never had a chance.”
A Biden transition spokesperson declined to comment.
Canada’s ambassador to Washington Kirsten Hillman would not confirm reports. “The Government of Canada continues to support the Keystone XL project, ” she said in a statement to POLITICO on Sunday evening. “Keystone XL fits within Canada’s climate plan. It will also contribute to U.S. vitality security and economic competitiveness.”
Rescinding Keystone XL would disprove one of President Donald Trump’s own first actions in role and kill a project that had become a political totem in the fight between climate activists and the petroleum industry. Despite many psychoanalysts saying the boom in U.S. shale oil established new sources of Canadian crude less important, TC Energy has fought years of legal challenges against it acquiring the needed commonwealth permissions that would all it to build the pipeline.
The reaction: TC Energy announced Sunday that Keystone XL would achieve net-zero emissions across operations formerly it begins running in 2023. A spokesman didn’t respond to a request for comment on Biden’s executive order plans.
Environmentalists praised the decision. “President-elect Biden is showing courage and empathy to the farmers, ranchers and tribal nations who have dealt with an ongoing threat that disrupted “peoples lives” for over a decade, ” said Jane Kleeb, founder of Bold Nebraska, a grassroots group be concentrated on scuttling the project.
Canada-U.S. relations: TC Energy first put forward this$ 8 billion pipe in 2008, saying the 1,200 -mile project was crucial to deliver crude from Western Canada to refineries in the Midwest. The Obama administration in 2015 denied a cross-border permit for the pipeline, nonetheless, saying the oil it would give would exacerbate climate change.
Keystone XL was committed as part of the few issues on which Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau agreed. The Liberal government had planned to continue to advocate for the pipeline.
During a congratulatory bawl with Biden on Nov. 9 , Trudeau told the incoming president he looked forward to joining forces to fight climate change while co-operating on energy jobs like the Keystone XL.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney bet Biden would not cancel a project already under building when he announced in March that his government had taken a $1.1 billion stake in Keystone XL. Preliminary construction started last-place fall in Montana, Nebraska and South Dakota.
The provincial government openly mulled a legal intervention last year into a court case that had set pipe building on hold and reportedly hired American lobbyists to make its case in Washington.
Stef Feldman, a policy director for Biden’s campaign, told POLITICO in May that the Democrat would “proudly stand in the Roosevelt Room again as President and stop it for good.”
What’s next: In a statement Sunday night, Kenney vowed working in collaboration with TC Energy “to use all legal boulevards available to protect” Alberta’s interest in the pipeline.
Read more: politico.com
