Trump pushes Keystone XL pipeline construction restart, promises fast approvals
February 25, 2025
US President Donald Trump resurrected a scrapped oil pipeline projects via a social media post on Monday night, 24 February, and enticed the company once working on it to “come back to America”.
Creative image representing the Keystone XL pipeline project and those opposed and in favour of it. (Image generated by AI)
The company, however, has said it’s “moved on” from the project.
The multi-billion-dollar Keystone XL pipeline was originally proposed almost 20 years ago. It was designed as a 1,897km, 914mm tube to bring oil from Canada tar sands to US refiners. It was expected to carry 830,000 barrels of oil sand crude from Alberta, Canada, to Nebraska, US.
The project was halted in 2021 after President Joe Biden revoked a necessary permit. The pipeline faced legal challenges from environmentalists, US landowners and Native American tribes.
It was owned by Canada-based TC Energy Corp at the time. WorleyParsons won an engineering design contract prior to the XL pipeline’s cancellation.
In Trump’s Monday night post, he referred to “the company that was building” the pipeline but did not mention one by name; TC Energy is now named South Bow Energy. He propositioned said company, saying they should “come back to America, and get it built”. He promised “easy approvals” and “almost immediate start”.
South Bow, however, said it is not interested in the president’s overture. A company representative told Construction Briefing, “We’ve moved on from the Keystone XL project. We continue to engage with customers to develop options to increase Canadian oil supplies to meet growing demand.”
Trump also supported the pipeline’s construction during his first term. In 2017, Trump signed an executive order to push the XL pipeline project forward, though legal challenges and cratering public opinion (by 2017, 48% of Americans opposed the project and 42% were in favour of it) prevented a construction start.
The project has fallen along partisan lines at the presidential level: Republican George W. Bush supported the project in 2008 and Democrat Barack Obama opposed it (denying the project a permit). The Republican Trump then revived the concept in 2017, which was shot down by Democrat Biden in 2021.
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