Democrat Biden says he would kill Keystone XL pipeline

[May 19, 2020]  By James Oliphant

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Joe Biden’s campaign said on Monday that if elected president, the presumptive Democratic nominee would rescind the permit for Keystone XL pipeline, which effectively would doom the long-troubled project.

In doing so, Biden would reverse actions taken by President Donald Trump, who in 2017 cleared the way for the $8 billion oil sands pipeline to built across the U.S.-Canada border.

Trump, a Republican, had made building the pipeline a central promise of his presidential campaign. Biden was vice president in the Obama administration when it rejected the project as contrary to its efforts to combat climate change.

“Biden strongly opposed the Keystone pipeline in the last administration, stood alongside President Obama and Secretary Kerry to reject it in 2015, and will proudly stand in the Roosevelt Room again as President and stop it for good by rescinding the Keystone XL pipeline permit,” Stef Feldman, Biden’s policy director, said in a statement.

Construction of the pipeline, which would carry 830,000 barrels a day of crude from Alberta, Canada to the U.S. Midwest, has been delayed for more than decade by opposition from landowners, environmental groups and tribes.

Democratic U.S. presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during the 11th Democratic candidates debate of the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign, held in CNN's Washington studios without an audience because of the global coronavirus pandemic, in Washington, U.S., March 15, 2020. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

Last month, a U.S. federal court dealt another setback when it ruled against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ use of a new pipeline permit to cross bodies of water, potentially delaying construction further.

The project is owned by TC Energy Corp of Alberta.

(Editing by David Gregorio)

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