The fossil fuel industry says it is ready to stand with President Trump in future legal brawls challenging pipeline projects that environmentalists have promised to work tooth and nail to stop.
Last week, Trump sent a signal to the industry that the White House’s resistance to new pipeline projects, and indeed some old ones, left with former President Barack Obama. In signing several presidential memos, Trump reignited the approval processes for the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, both of which Obama thought he either killed or delayed before leaving office.
American Petroleum Institute President and CEO Jack Gerard called Trump’s move a return to the rule of law because Keystone XL and Dakota Access were both stalled due to political concerns. He expects environmentalists to put up a fight and API, the biggest trade organization representing the oil and natural gas industry, to be there to back the administration.
“We typically, where appropriate and where we agree, we support the government position,” he said. “We’ve even done that in the previous administration.”
“I fully expect we’re going to be aligned with this administration, I fully expect they’re going to look to us.”
On Tuesday, Trump announced his administration would establish a process for designating new infrastructure projects such as pipelines as “high-priority projects” that would streamline and expedite the permitting process, as well as environmental reviews. He also required all new pipelines to be built with steel produced in America.
The Keystone XL pipeline was the primary fight between the oil industry and environmentalists for much of the last decade. The proposed project would take crude oil from the Canadian tar sands to Nebraska in a 1,179-mile pipeline. It then would be shipped through the already existing Keystone pipeline to the Gulf Coast to be refined.
The Obama administration denied TransCanada, the company building the pipeline, a permit to cross the northern border in November 2015. The company reapplied for a permit on Thursday.
Less than a year after that decision, the Dakota Access Pipeline became the next dramatic fight for environmentalists. The pipeline would bring light, sweet crude oil from the Bakken/Three Fields oil fields in North Dakota 1,172 miles to Illinois.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North Dakota fought against the pipeline by blocking the path it would take near their reservation. The tribe was concerned that the underground pipeline would endanger their water supply because it crossed under a lake just outside of their reservation.
Environmentalists soon jumped onto the fight and turned it into the biggest environmental fight of 2016. While a federal judge cleared the way for construction to take place, the Obama administration put a halt to proceedings to listen to the tribe’s concerns.
It seems that pause will soon end after Trump ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to “review and approve” the project if the agency finds that it follows the law. He ordered the same for the Keystone XL project.
“It’s subject to a renegotiation of terms by us, we’re going to renegotiate some of the terms,” Trump said while signing the memo. “And … we’ll see if we can get that pipeline built. Lot of jobs, 28,000 jobs, great construction jobs.”
While the industry and Republicans reacted with joy to Trump’s order, environmentalists universally pledged to fight Trump every step of the way.
Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, said “enormous resistance” was coming in a New York Times op-ed, and Tom B.K. Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, said the group that protested the Dakota Access Pipeline is itching for a fight.
“These attacks will not be ignored, our resistance is stronger now than ever before and we are prepared to push back at any reckless decision made by this administration,” Goldtooth said. “If Trump does not pull back from implementing these orders, it will only result in more massive mobilization and civil disobedience on a scale never seen of a newly seated president of the United States.”
The Natural Resources Defense Council already has begun raising money to fight Trump in court. Rhea Suh, the group’s director, reported more than 50,000 people donated to the NRDC to help fight Trump in court in the weeks following the election and 13,000 supporters pledged to make monthly donations.
Those protests will harm the thousands of workers expected to find jobs on the pipelines and American consumers purchasing the oil and natural gas moving through them, Gerard said.
He told the Washington Examiner he expects McKibben and other environmentalists to fight projects regardless of their merit.
“I fully expect that shrill group of critics … are going to do everything they can to stop this activity and they are going to at every project,” he said.
“It raises cost, all these things that impact consumers. Any time you go out and add cost to the development of a pipeline, you’re hurting Americans with that.”
Even with the expected protests, the industry is likely to push for more pipeline projects, he said.
“It’s very positive in terms of restoring confidence … that infrastructure can be built in this country when you meet the requirements of the law,” he said.
Rep. Rob Bishop, a Utah Republican and chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said the moves show that Trump understands how important pipeline infrastructure is to the U.S. economy.
Congressional Republicans have long lamented that a lack of pipelines hurts the ability of oil and gas producers to move energy to the market. Bishop said a new day is dawning in the oil and gas industry.
“This action is a path forward on critical infrastructure projects that should have already moved forward,” he said. “We have a new era before us of investment, jobs and energy security that I look forward to coordinating with the Trump administration.”
