OTTAWA — Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was quick to second U.S. President Donald Trump’s call to revive the cancelled Keystone XL pipeline on Tuesday.
“Agreed President Trump… That project should have never been cancelled,” Smith posted on X Tuesday morning.
“Lower fuel costs for American families is a big win.”
Trump revealed just hours earlier on his Truth Social platform that the shelved pipeline project was still on his mind.
“I was just thinking that the company building the Keystone XL Pipeline (TC Energy) was viciously jettisoned by the incompetent Biden administration,” wrote Trump.
Trump added that TC Energy, or another pipeline company, should come back to the U.S. to finish building Keystone XL, promising an expedited approval process.
“We want the Keystone XL Pipeline built!” said Trump.
One hiccup is that TC Energy is no longer in the business of building oil pipelines.
The Calgary-based energy company announced a major restructuring in 2023, two years after the Biden administration pulled Keystone XL’s permit, spinning its crude oil interests into a new venture called South Bow.
TC Energy also sued unsuccessfully to recover $15 billion (USD) in losses from the U.S. government stemming from Keystone XL’s cancellation.
The spinoff was completed in October 2024, theoretically giving South Bow first dibs on a reboot of the project.
South Bow doesn’t look to be jumping at this opportunity.
“We’ve moved on from the Keystone XL project. We continue to engage with customers to develop options to increase Canadian oil supplies to meet growing demand,” wrote South Bow spokesperson Katie Stavinoha in an email to the National Post.
First proposed in 2008, Keystone XL would have given crude oil from Alberta’s oil sands an expedited route to refineries in the U.S. Gulf Coast, crossing three Midwestern states.
Trump was an enthusiastic supporter of the project during his first term in office (2017 – 2021) but oversaw the construction of just a small segment of pipeline on the U.S. side of the border.
The project stalled in 2020, when the conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision stopping its construction over environmental concerns.
The Alberta government put up $1.3 billion the same year in an ultimately futile effort to keep the troubled project afloat.
If completed, the project would have contributed roughly $2.4 billion to Canada’s GDP and $30 billion in tax and royalty revenues, according to the province of Alberta.
Heather Exner-Pirot, an energy policy analyst at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, says there isn’t a strong case for throwing more taxpayer dollars at Keystone XL.
“I wouldn’t put a dollar towards de-risking it, providing equity for it, or designating it as the national interest,” said Exner-Pirot.
“My eggs are in the West Coast basket.”
National Post
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