The developer of the rejected Keystone XL pipeline is none-too-thrilled with Donald Trump’s idea for resurrecting its project.
Trump said Thursday during a major energy speech that he would ask TransCanada to resubmit its application to build the 1,200-plus mile pipeline to connect Canada’s tar sands with U.S. refiners on the Gulf Coast if he won the presidential election.
The catch is, Trump wants a significant amount of the pipeline’s revenue to go into federal coffers. And that’s not how a free market operates, the company said.
“The role of the U.S. government in such transactions is that of a regulator — ensuring various laws and regulations are followed — and granting appropriate permits,” TransCanada spokesman James Millar said Friday.
“We would expect to continue to follow this model that has been in place for decades.”
A spokesman told the Washington Examiner that it is important to point out that U.S. companies would be the pipeline’s customers.
The pipeline would benefit U.S. workers over the long term as several U.S. companies, which would be customers of the line, sign long-term contracts to send oil through the pipeline, said spokesman Terry Cunha. That doesn’t include the 40,000 jobs created to build the $8 billion pipeline project.
The project also would provide “tens of millions of dollars in property taxes TransCanada would pay to states along the pipeline’s route if it is built,” Cunha said.
He hinted that Trump should pay close attention to the strategic benefits of the pipeline before initiating revenue stipulations.
“We believe Americans would rather use U.S. and Canadian oil through Keystone XL than continue the current practice of importing millions of barrels of oil every day from Venezuela and the Middle East,” he said.
President Obama rejected the project in November after his administration reviewed the application for seven years. The State Department had found no significant problem with moving ahead with the project, but he rejected it, saying it would be bad for the country’s climate change efforts, a month before signing onto the Paris climate deal.
