The crunch at the gas pump exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to calls in conservative circles to restart the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. But those calls may be nothing more than a pipe dream.

The cross-border, multibillion-dollar project fell victim to partisan politics in the early days of the Biden administration, when President Joe Biden, in one of his first acts, signed an executive order halting production of the pipeline stretching from the Canadian border through the Dakotas to refineries in the Gulf Coast.