The Biden administration is considering new ways to increase its crude oil imports from Canada, with officials weighing everything from increasing rail exports to expanding pipeline capacity along existing routes.
So far, no clear-cut solutions have emerged. But the Wall Street Journal reported that one option does remain strictly off-limits: reconsidering revival of the Keystone XL pipeline, the project effectively shuttered by President Joe Biden on his first day in office.
The news comes as the Biden administration has sought to shield consumers from the recent surge in U.S. gas prices, which soared last month to their highest point since 2008.
As part of that effort, the White House has introduced a number of measures intended to stabilize prices at the pump, including Biden’s announcement last week that the United States will release an additional 180 million barrels of crude oil from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help bolster supplies.
But without action to revive the Keystone XL, options to increase imports of Canadian crude remain limited.
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While Canada could ramp up its rail exports to the U.S. by an additional 200,000 barrels per day, analysts said that doing so would be an expensive option. And the increase would be minimal — amounting to just a tiny fraction of Canada’s exports to the U.S., which averaged roughly 4.3 million barrels per day last year.
The Canadian government is also moving to expand its Trans Mountain pipeline from Alberta, which will eventually enable it to ship some 590,000 additional barrels per day. But that expansion won’t be completed until 2023.
The White House has argued that even if Biden moved today to revive action on Keystone XL, the pipeline would still not be completed in time to help fix the nation’s gas crisis.
“While the U.S. continues to engage with a variety of producing countries to address the current supply imbalance we are seeing, the Keystone XL pipeline would have done little to nothing in addressing that supply,” a White House spokesman told the Wall Street Journal.
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Analysts said that Canada does have ample supply to meet U.S. demand, it just doesn’t have the pipeline capacity to deliver it. “There’s not a limitation in terms of resource potential,” said Kevin Birn, an analyst with S&P Global Commodity Insights. “There’s a limitation of capacity.”
