President Signs Orders To Allow Keystone XL, Dakota Access Pipeline Construction To Move Ahead
On Tuesday, January 24, President Donald Trump signed memos directing his administration to take the appropriate and necessary steps to approve the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines. According to Bloomberg, “Trump stopped short of green lighting construction on either pipeline but put a deadline on the government’s review of TransCanada Corp.’s proposed Keystone XL to transport Alberta oil sands crude to U.S. refineries.”
As the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy explains, President Trump’s “actions would essentially reverse the decision by the Obama Administration to undertake another lengthy environmental review process.”
Click here to read MSCI’s past statements on the Dakota Access Pipeline.
As a reminder, the Keystone Pipeline could create up to 42,000 new jobs for American workers during construction, put $2.2 billion in workers’ pockets, and contributed $3.4 billion to U.S. gross domestic product.
President Trump also signed an order saying that U.S. steel and iron should be used to build these two pipelines, and other pipelines. That order directed the secretary of commerce to “develop a plan under which all new pipelines, as well as retrofitted, repaired, or expanded pipelines, inside the borders of the United States, including portions of pipelines, use materials and equipment produced in the United States, to the maximum extent possible and to the extent permitted by law.”
After the president’s announcement, TransCanada submitted a new application for the Keystone pipeline.