From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

In a post on his Truth Social media platform Monday night, President Donald Trump said he still wants to see the Keystone XL pipeline through to completion. Here is the full text of the president’s post:

“Our Country’s doing really well, and today, I was just thinking, that the company building the Keystone XL Pipeline that was viciously jettisoned by the incompetent Biden administration should come back to America, and get it built — NOW! I know they were treated very badly by Sleepy Joe Biden, but the Trump Administration is very different — Easy approvals, almost immediate start! If not them, perhaps another Pipeline Company. We want the Keystone XL Pipeline built!”

For those unaware, the company that spent a decade attempting to finance, obtain permits, and build the Keystone XL pipeline project is TC Energy  (formerly Trans Canada), which is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Fraught with controversy from the beginning, Keystone XL became a true political football during the Barack Obama presidency as the anti-oil and gas lobby in the U.S. mounted a disinformation campaign to kill public support for it. The mounting of the costly disinformation campaign made the process of obtaining permits at all levels of government – state, local, and federal – far more difficult and time-consuming, needlessly running up the project’s cost in the process.

After the Obama State Department led by Secretary John Kerry refused to issue the international cross-border permit required to complete the line, Trump quickly acted to ensure its approval early in his first term in office. By the time Joe Biden assumed office in January 2021, TC Energy had invested billions of dollars – creating thousands of high-paying jobs in the process – and well over half the line was already in the ground. Still, despite the huge sunk cost and lacking an ability to cite any instance in which TC Energy stood in violation of any U.S. law or regulation, Biden took the extraordinary, indefensible step of cancelling the project with the stroke of a pen.

But can the project really be revived now? It’s an important question given that Keystone XL was designed to bring as many as 830,000 barrels of Canadian oil per day into the United States for refining and delivery to markets.

Here, it is key to note that – as I pointed out last November when then-President-elect Trump raised this topic – TC Energy is no longer the owner of the moribund project. The remnants of Keystone XL were included in a group of assets TC Energy spun off last year when it formed a new company named South Bow Energy.

Complicating matters further is the fact that, after it decided the pipeline was a lost cause back in 2021, TC Energy pulled the installed pipe out of the ground so it could be repurposed for other projects in its portfolio. Then, there’s the fact that many of the permits the company spent years trying to obtain from various levels of governments are no longer valid and would have to go through the application and approval processes again were the project to be revived.

At the federal level, the Department of Interior and FERC would govern most of the necessary permitting processes. President Trump ordered all of his departments and commissions in January to research ways the executive branch can streamline the federal processes and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum included that goal as one of his 6 top priorities in a memo to staff dated February 3.

But even if those projects are successful in speeding up permitting at the federal level, they would have no impact on such challenges at the state and local levels. Activist groups who organized the opposition to the project saw great success in holding up permitting issuances at these lower levels of government, and would no doubt revive that strategy to attack any effort to restart the pipeline.

There can be no doubt that Trump’s desire to get the pipeline built is a laudable goal from a commercial, environmental and national security standpoint. Whether it is a practical goal is another question with many factors arrayed in opposition to it.

But one thing I’ve learned long ago is to never underestimate Donald Trump’s ability to get a deal done, so no one should give up hope just yet.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

From the Fraser Institute

By Julio Mejía and Elmira Aliakbari

This negative perception of Canada’s regulatory environment is hardly a surprise, given Ottawa’s policies over the last decade.

During last night’s Liberal leadership debate, there was a lot of talk about Donald Trump. But whatever your views on President Trump, one thing is certain—he’s revitalized his country’s energy sector. Through a set of executive orders, Trump instructed agency heads to identify “actions that impose an undue burden on the identification, development, or use of domestic energy source” and “exercise any lawful emergency authorities available” to facilitate energy production and transportation. In other words, let’s become an energy superpower.

Clearly, to avoid falling further behind, Canada must swiftly end policies that unduly restrict oil and gas production and discourage investment. Change can’t come soon enough.

Before Trump’s inauguration, red tape was already hindering Canada’s oil and gas sector, which was less attractive for investment compared to the United States. According to a survey conducted in 2023, , 68 per cent of oil and gas investors said uncertainty about environmental regulations deterred investment in Canada’s oil and gas sector compared to 41 per cent in the U.S. Similarly, 54 per cent said Canada’s regulatory duplication and inconsistencies deterred investment compared to only 34 per cent for the U.S. And 55 per cent of respondents said that uncertainty regarding the enforcement of existing regulations in Canada deterred investment compared to only 37 per cent of respondents for the U.S.

This negative perception of Canada’s regulatory environment is hardly a surprise, given Ottawa’s policies over the last decade. For example, one year after taking office, in 2016 the Trudeau government cancelled the previously approved $7.9 billion Northern Gateway pipeline, which was designed to transport crude oil from Alberta to British Columbia’s coast, expanding Canada’s access to Asian markets.

In 2017, Prime Minister Trudeau undermined the long-term confidence in the sector by vowing to “phase out” fossil fuels in Canada.

In 2019, the Trudeau government passed Bill C-69, introducing subjective criteria including the “gender implications” of energy investment into the evaluation process of major energy projects, causing massive uncertainty around the development of new projects.

Also that year, the government enacted Bill C-48, which bans large oil tankers from B.C.’s northern coast, limiting Canadian exports to Asia.

In 2023, the Trudeau government announced plans to cap greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the oil and gas sector at 35 per cent below 2019 levels by 2030—an arbitrary measure considering GHG emissions from other sectors in the economy were left untouched. According to a recent report, to comply with the cap, Canadian firms must severely curtail oil and gas production. As one might expect, these policies come at a cost. Over the last decade, investment in Canada’s oil and gas sector has collapsed by 56 per cent, from $84.0 billion in 2014 to $37.2 billion in 2023 (inflation adjusted). Less investment means less funding for new energy projects, technologies and infrastructure, and fewer job opportunities and economic opportunities for Canadians nationwide.

The energy gap between the U.S. and Canada is set to grow wider during President Trump’s second term. While Trump wants to attract investment to the American oil and gas industry by streamlining processes and cutting costs, Canada is driving investment away with costly and often arbitrary measures. If Ottawa continues on its current path, Canada’s leading industry—and its largest source of exports—will lose more ground to the U.S. When Parliament reconvenes, policymakers must move quickly to eliminate harmful policies hindering our energy sector.

Julio Mejía

Policy Analyst

Elmira Aliakbari

Director, Natural Resource Studies, Fraser Institute