Federal Judge Blocks Keystone XL Pipeline Permit
November 09 2018 - 01:56AM
Dow Jones News
By Miguel Bustillo
A federal judge in Montana on Thursday blocked the Trump
administration's permit allowing the Keystone XL pipeline and
barred any construction of the long-delayed project until
completion of a supplemental environmental review.
Siding with environmentalists and indigenous rights groups, U.S.
District Judge Brian M. Morris ruled that President Trump's 2017
cross-border permit of the pipeline expansion by TransCanada Corp.
to take oil from Alberta to Nebraska hadn't considered all impacts
as required by federal law.
The ruling requires the federal government to update a prior
2014 environmental review of Keystone XL to weigh several
additional factors, including the impact of lower oil prices on the
project's viability, its related greenhouse-gas emissions and
modeling of potential oil spills it could cause.
The decision threatens to further delay a pipeline that has
already been blocked for a decade by legal and political
opposition, and has become a rallying cry for environmentalists who
want to keep fossil fuels in the ground.
Mr. Trump revived Keystone XL after it had been blocked by
President Barack Obama, but the project has continued to face
challenges and its future remains uncertain.
TransCanada said earlier this year that it has sufficient
support from customers to move forward with the project, now
expected to cost around $8 billion, and that work could begin next
year. But it has yet to make a final decision on whether to
complete construction. It didn't immediately respond to requests
for comment Thursday night.
The U.S. State Department, which issued the presidential permit
and was the other defendant in the case, also didn't immediately
respond to a request for comment.
"Today's ruling is a victory for the rule of law, and it's a
victory for common sense stewardship of the land and water upon
which we all depend, " said Dena Hoff, a Montana farmer and member
of the Northern Plains Resource Council, one of the plaintiffs in
the suit.
If completed as planned, Keystone XL, an expansion of the
existing Keystone pipeline system, would carry up to 830,000
barrels of oil a day, mostly from Canada's oil sands, more than
1,000 miles to Steele City, Neb., where it would link to existing
pipelines to Gulf Coast refineries. The proposed route would cross
through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska.
In his ruling, Mr. Morris, who was nominated by Mr. Obama, wrote
that while the federal government had previously undertaken an
environmental review of the project, it had subsequently cited it
to reject a presidential permit under the Obama administration in
2015, and never fully explained its justification for reversing
course and approving a permit under the Trump administration in
2017.
"An agency must provide a detailed justification for reversing
course and adopting a policy that 'rests upon factual findings that
contradict those which underlay its prior policy,'" the judge
wrote, citing prior precedent.
State Department lawyers argued that the Trump administration
was within its right to have done so, calling it a policy decision
based in part on factors such as energy security.
Christopher M. Matthews contributed to this article.
Write to Miguel Bustillo at miguel.bustillo@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 09, 2018 01:41 ET (06:41 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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