GOLDSTEIN: Resurrecting Keystone XL pipeline would be win for Canada
· Toronto Sun
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If the new U.S.-Canada trade deal — details to come — revives the Keystone XL pipeline project, as U.S. President Donald Trump hinted in announcing the trade agreement had been reached, it would be a good deal for Canada.
As Trump described it on Truth Social in announcing he was temporarily suspending his 50% tariffs on $28 billion worth of Canadian goods that were supposed to go into effect August 19: “The great Keystone XL Pipeline, long ago killed by Sleepy Joe Biden, may be awoken from the grave!”
He also posted an AI-generated image of himself dramatically ripping the pipeline out of a gravesite labelled “Buried by Biden” with a sign saying “KEYSTONE PIPELINE COMPLETELY FREE ENERGY, JOBS, AMERICA FIRST” between two American flags.
Given Trumps propensity for bombast, whether it actually happens — and there is no word yet from the Carney government on Trump’s reference to the Keystone XL — is anyone’s guess.
But if it did, it would benefit Canada.
Had the Keystone XL been approved, it would have generated an estimated $30 billion in tax and royalty revenues for Canada, with a $2.4 billion boost to Canada’s GDP.
The original proposal in 2008 for a 1,947-km pipeline — an expansion of the existing Keystone pipeline network — was to deliver 830,000 barrels a day of diluted oil sands bitumen from Hardisty, Alberta to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast, for sale mainly to international markets.
Project supported by Harper and Trudeau
The project was supported by both the Stephen Harper Conservative government and the Justin Trudeau Liberal government.
Despite that, it was initially vetoed by then U.S. president Barack Obama — not Biden — in 2015, after he dithered on the issue for seven years.
(Obama had the final say as does any U.S. president on the Keystone XL because the proposal crossed the Canada-U.S. international border.)
Obama used his veto to burnish his “green” credentials within the Democratic Party, even though he simultaneously boasted — as he did to U.S. pipeline workers in Oklahoma in 2012 — that under his presidency, “we’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline (in the U.S.) to encircle the earth and then some.”
Obama’s state department twice told him after major reviews of the project that the Keystone XL would not significantly increase industrial greenhouse gas emissions, and that any alternative method of moving crude oil from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast would increase emissions compared to the Keystone XL.
Eventually, Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency gave him a two-and-a-half page opinion that read like a high school essay but said what Obama wanted to hear — that based on some incredibly flimsy logic, Keystone might someday increase emissions compared to other methods of transporting the oil to the U.S.
Billionaire investor and Obama supporter Warren Buffett said he should have approved Keystone.
Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler gave Obama “four Pinocchios” for telling “whoppers” (lies) about the Keystone XL.
Hillary Clinton, Obama’s secretary of state, said in 2010 that she was inclined to support the Keystone XL in the interests of U.S. energy security, but later flip-flopped while campaigning in the 2016 presidential election she lost to Trump.
Keystone XL resurrected by Trump in 2017
The Keystone XL was resurrected by Trump in January 2017 after he defeated Biden, then Biden killed it on his first day in office in January 2021 after defeating Trump.
It was partially resurrected by Trump for the second time in April 2026, after defeating Kamala Harris in the November 2024 presidential election.
That said, building the original pipeline today would face numerous regulatory hurdles as well as protests by environmental organizations and citizens’ groups in both the U.S. and Canada, that have opposed the Keystone XL from the start.
The original corporate backer of the project, TC Energy, withdrew in 2021 after Biden vetoed it, costing the Alberta government $1.3 billion it had spent supporting the project.
The current plan is for a smaller version of the Keystone XL, known as the 1,000-km Prairie Connector pipeline, to transport 550,000 barrels of oil from Alberta’s oil sands to Wyoming, partly along the original proposed path of the Keystone XL.
That project is co-sponsored by Calgary-based South Bow Corp. (the pipeline spinoff of TC Energy) and its U.S. partner, Bridger Pipeline.