Trump Energy EO and Keystone XL: “The Industry and the World Have Moved On”

The Trump administration released an executive order this week that attempts to reinstate a cross-border permits to help “restart” the Keystone XL pipeline—a controversial project that the developer walked away from in 2021 after more than a decade of fighting.

Following is reaction from Anthony Swift, a longtime leader in the fight against the project and current senior director of global northern forests at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council):

“The industry and the world have all moved on from KXL.

“The tar sands pipeline did not make economic sense a decade ago, and it makes even less sense now. But the environmental concerns are no less acute; KXL would have threatened water supplies all along its path—especially in the sandhills of Nebraska—and exacerbated climate change by pushing the dirtiest oil on the planet through the American heartland along the spine of the continent, from Alberta to the Gulf Coast, to be exported.

“The incoming administration has been lobbing gifts to Big Oil through its executive orders, but this one is negligible in the real world because even the industry has moved on from that project. President Trump has repeatedly said that America does not need Canada’s oil…so we certainly don’t need KXL.”