Listen to this article

The U.S President Donald Trump has issued a new permit for a controversial oil pipeline. The critics also said that it will devastate local communities and prove disastrous for the environment. The move comes despite a federal judge blocking the Keystone XL project in the month of November. The court said the government hadn’t fully considered oil spills and other impacts and must conduct another review. Trump said the new permit will replace the previous one granted 2 years ago.

It is designed to boost the development of the pipeline. The pipeline is designed to transport crude oil from tar sands in western Canada to the U.S Gulf Coast. The White House spokesman said this permit reinforces the presidential permit is indeed an exercise of presidential authority that is not subject to judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act. A lawyer for environmentalists, Stephan Volker sued to stop the project and called Trump’s action illegal and vowed to seek a court order blocking project developer TransCanada from moving forward with construction.

Volker said, “President Trump has launched a direct assault on our system of governance”. Calgary-based TransCanada said in a statement that Trump’s order clarifies the national importance of Keystone XL and aims to bring more than 10-years of environmental review to closure. TransCanada’s president and CEO, Russ Girling said Trump has been clear that he needs to create jobs and advance U.S energy security, and the Keystone XL pipeline does both of those things.

It is noteworthy that Keystone XL will create thousands of jobs and deliver crude oil to U.S refineries in a safest and most efficient way. The U.S Chamber of Commerce welcomed the action and said review after review had found the project could be environmentally responsible. But, the director of the Canada project for the Natural Resources Defense Council, Anthony Swift said the pipeline was a bad idea from day one and it remains a terrible idea. It would threaten our land, our drinking water, and our communities from Montana and Nebraska to the Gulf Coast.