Under Trump, Will Keystone XL Remain a Pipe Dream?

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to issue a day-one executive order to restore federal approvals for the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, similar to his January 2017 directive overturning the Obama administration’s 2015 rejection of the same project. Trump’s first-term Keystone restoration was reversed by President Joe Biden in a January 2021 executive order, again halting development of the 1,180-mile pipeline between Alberta, Canada, and Steele City, Nebraska. While Trump 2.0 could nullify Biden’s directive in a pen stroke on Jan. 20, 2025, he won’t be able to resurrect Keystone XL because the project no longer exists. “My understanding is the company has pulled the steel out of the ground and shipped it elsewhere and found alternative routes to get its product to market,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity....