Trump Approves New Canada/USA Oil Pipeline, and Not Everyone Is Happy About It

Sometimes these things get lost in the news-cycle madness, but this is kind of a big deal; on Thursday, President Trump signed the approval for what is being called the "Keystone Light" oil pipeline. Technically, what the president approved was the crossing of the pipeline from Canada into the USA, which was where Joe Biden was able to confound the original Keystone pipeline. No longer.

 

President Donald Trump granted a key approval Thursday for a major new oil pipeline from Canada into the U.S. that’s been dubbed “Keystone Light” over its similarities to a contentious project blocked by the Biden administration.

The three-foot-wide (1 meter) Bridger Pipeline Expansion would carry up to 550,000 barrels (87,400 cubic meters) of oil a day from Canada through Montana and Wyoming, where it would link with another pipeline.

The pipeline needs additional state and federal environmental approvals before construction, which company officials expect to start next year. Environmentalists hope to stop the project over worries that the pipeline could break and spill.

At peak volume, the 650-mile (1,050-kilometer) pipeline would move two-thirds as much oil as the better-known Keystone XL pipeline that got partially built before President Joe Biden, citing climate change, canceled its permit on the day he took office in 2021.

Another sensible energy policy round-filed over climate concerns, but then, that was the late, unlamented Biden administration for you. But now, 550,000 barrels of oil a day, from Canada; well, that's pretty good. And it speaks volumes of the cluelessness of whoever was pulling old Joe's strings over this matter, because there's far more to petroleum than just the energy sourcing; petroleum is essential to almost everything in our modern technological lifestyles, from plastics to lubricants to pharmaceutical precursors.

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Not everyone is happy about the approval, and there will probably be more protests and more trash-strewn encampments left abandoned when the protests are over.

 

“We know that if this project goes through, our land and our water are in danger. Our future is in danger,” warned Krystal Two Bulls, one of many community, conservation, and Indigenous group leaders speaking out after President Donald Trump granted a cross-border permit to what critics called “nothing more than an attempt to resurrect the unpopular Keystone XL pipeline.”

The fears here are overblown. It's far safer and cleaner to move oil by pipeline than by tanker truck or train car. The incident/spill rates for moving oil by truck is about 20 incidents per billion ton/miles; for train, it's about two incidents per billion ton/miles. Pipelines have around 0.6 incidents per billion ton/miles. As for the people working to move that oil, pipelines have by far the lowest rates of injuries and deaths on the job. And even this is far lower than the environmental havoc created by the "environmentalists" who protested the original Keystone pipeline.  

This oil is going to move, one way or another. So a pipeline makes the most sense.

This seems appropriate, since this act is sure to give climate scolds a bad case of bitter beer face.