Is Trump really planning to revive Keystone XL? And is there even life left

There’s lately been a lot of talk in Washington about resurrecting the Keystone XL pipeline, the 1,897-kilometre pipeline that was designed to take oil from northern Alberta to the U.S. Midwest.

The project was first proposed by Calgary-based TC Energy in 2008. It was scrapped under the Obama administration, then revived by Donald Trump during his first term in the Oval Office. Then it was killed again by President Joe Biden on his first day in office in January 2021 — after Alberta had already invested more than a billion dollars in the project. 

Now, Trump is headed back to the White House and reportedly plans to restart the project, generating plenty of excitement on both sides of the border. After the U.S. election, Alberta’s premier reportedly reached out to TC Energy to see if Keystone XL could be revived or if there were other ways to increase the province’s oil and gas pipeline export volumes to the U.S. 

But experts warn there are sizable hurdles ahead, along with the new complication of Trump’s threat to impose a 25 per cent tariff on Canadian imports. If the tariff plan proceeds, it would pummel the Canadian energy industry, whose No. 1 export market is the U.S. 

But even without the tariff issue, bringing back Keystone XL would be challenging, said Dennis McConaghy, a former TC Energy executive who was involved in the pipeline’s original plans. 

“It’s nonsensical to be advocating revival of XL while hanging these tariffs over Canada,” he added. 

Political enthusiasm not matched by industry

The failed pipeline has become a powerful symbol in U.S. domestic politics and the debate about climate change, sometimes divorced from the reality of oil production. 

In 2021, Biden’s cancellation of Keystone XL was regularly touted by Republicans as the reason for surging gas prices. This was despite the fact that prices had jumped before the pipeline was ever expected to be complete, and that it would carry barely two per cent of the oil Americans consume per day.

Speaking on a podcast about a week before the election, Trump’s pick for commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, framed the Keystone XL pipeline — and the failure to build it — as a matter of energy security.

“All of our states and all of our people need domestic power [yet] we refuse to build pipelines to get our own energy to ourselves,” said Lutnick. 

“Instead of calling it the ‘Keystone pipeline,’ they should have called it the ‘national-security-deliver-gas-and-oil-across-the-United-States-of-America,'” he said.

Rumours that the pipeline might be resurrected have been cheered by politicians like Steve Daines, a Republican senator in Montana. 

“Sen. Daines supports any action that will increase domestic energy production, including reviving the wrong-headed decision by President Biden to kill the Keystone XL pipeline,” spokesperson Matt Lloyd said in a statement to CBC News. 

But the decision to restart the project ultimately rests with the companies involved, said…