NEW YORK – Opponents of two controversial oil pipelines face a long and difficult legal path if the US government approves their construction, experts said after the Trump administration issued orders on Tuesday intended to advance the Keystone XL and Dakota Access projects.
US president Donald Trump issued a pair of memoranda to several agencies paving the way to revive Keystone XL, which would bring oil from Canada, and Dakota Access, a nearly completed pipeline which had sought to build under a lake near a Native American reservation in North Dakota. Both projects stalled under former president Barack Obama.
“Presidents are by and large entitled to take their agencies in a different direction and serve their policy goals,” said Wayne D’Angelo, an energy and environmental lawyer with Kelley Drye & Warren in Washington.
Nevertheless, several groups immediately said they would challenge in court any attempt to resume the projects, which have become hot-button political issues at the intersection of environmentalism, Native American tribal rights and energy needs.
The two pipelines could present different legal obstacles for environmentalists and other groups intent on halting them.
As a cross-border project, the US$8 billion Keystone XL requires a presidential permit to proceed. Obama denied such a permit to pipeline operator TransCanada Corp in 2015, arguing it would undermine the US’ ability to act as a world leader on climate change policy.
Trump’s Keystone XL order yesterday invited TransCanada to re-apply. Presidential authority to grant such permits is generally accepted by the courts, said James Rubin, an energy and environmental attorney at Dorsey & Whitney in Washington.
Even with presidential approval, TransCanada would need permits from other government agencies, including the US department of the interior and the US army corps of engineers, to navigate federal waters and lands. Any of those permits could be legally challenged by opponents as improperly issued.
