Keystone Pipeline Opponents Resist Trump’s Construction Green Light

Interview with Linda Anderson, director of Bold Nebraska, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

In his first week in office, Donald Trump issued executive orders to expedite construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and the Dakota Access pipeline. When President Obama halted the project, the Dakota pipeline was almost finished, and now with a green light from the Trump administration is nearing completion of the last section under the Missouri River. Construction of the Keystone pipeline has not yet begun. After years of grassroots organizing along the pipeline route and around the country, in November 2015 President Obama denied a key permit for the project to cross from Canada into the U.S.

After taking office, Trump invited TransCanada, the company that wants to build the Keystone pipeline, to reapply for a permit, the company did so, proposing the same route that was denied by Obama. Now the project application is back before the State Department, led by former Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, a company that is heavily involved in tar sands development in Alberta that would feed the pipeline. A decision is expected in the next few months. If built the pipeline would run from Alberta, Canada, through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska where it would connect to an existing pipeline to deliver 830,000 barrels a day of the dirtiest form of oil on the planet to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Linda Anderson, director of Bold Nebraska, one of the groups that led opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline in the past with creative grassroots strategies that united ranchers and farmers and worked with indigenous opponents of the project. Here, Anderson says that with the new oil industry-friendly Trump administration, her group has had to change their tactics.

For more information visit Bold Nebraska at boldnebraska.org.

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