TC Energy has announced it will stop construction on the Keystone XL pipeline. In a statement issued just before President Joe Biden’s inauguration, TC said it is disappointed that the new president is rescinding the permit issued by the previous administration.
TC Energy says in its statement that the company has a successful business base and, aside from the Keystone XL pipeline, it will go forward with other funded projects as well as those under development.
But TC will stop the construction it already started, which includes a small segment of pipe that crosses the U.S.-Canada border.
Wes Furlong is an attorney with the Native American Rights Fund, which represents the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in Montana federal court. Furlong says the judge warned TC that construction before lawsuits were settled could result in a loss for the company.
“TransCanada’s forging ahead with building a pipeline with this sort of cloud of litigation hanging over their head, from the tribe’s perspective and our perspective, they really have assumed a lot of the risk of doing that.”
South Dakota’s congressional delegation has sent a joint message to Joe Biden to ask him to keep the pipeline permit in place.
Senators John Thune and Mike Rounds and Representative Dusty Johnson said shutting down Keystone XL would result in a loss of $100 million in property taxes to the state and thousands of jobs during pipeline construction.
But Wes Furlong says those construction jobs can be replaced.
“My personal hope is that there’s a real opportunity for infrastructure reinvestment and then new investment in different… alternative sources of energy that frankly are better paying and safer jobs.”
Furlong says it’s unfortunate that taxpayers in Alberta, where tar sands mining occurs, have now lost that province’s investment in the pipeline.
But he says insurance companies, banks, and investors have been pulling away from fossil fuels, and the market has dropped in response to less demand. So the Keystone XL pipeline project was trying to outrun the inevitable even before the presidential permit was pulled.