Biden set to cancel Keystone XL pipeline and right out the gate enrages Canada
Well isn't this coming Biden administration special?
Joe Biden has gotten word out that he intends to use his pen and phone to cut dead the Keystone XL pipeline, kicking off his presidency by annoying Canada.
According to CBC Canada:
U.S. president-elect Joe Biden has indicated plans to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline permit via executive action on his first day in office, sources confirmed to CBC News on Sunday.
A purported briefing note from the Biden transition team mentioning the plan was widely circulated over the weekend after being shared by the incoming president's team with U.S. stakeholders.
The words "Rescind Keystone XL pipeline permit" appear on a list of executive actions supposedly scheduled for Day 1 of Biden's presidency.
The list shown to stakeholders is a lengthier version of a list already reported in the media based on a memo released publicly over the weekend by Biden's chief of staff Ronald Klain. That publicly reported memo from Klain did not mention Keystone XL, but cautioned that the memo was not a complete list of planned actions.
Nice detail there about Biden omitting that planned executive action in the publicly circulated memo. Apparently he didn't want the adoring media, or the Americans set to lose their jobs, or the Canadians -- to see it right away.
The Canadians, though, have gotten wind of it, their not-so-adoring press has printed it and they're enraged:
A Canadian official tells me scrapping #Keystone project is “a punch in the face to Canada”, adding PM Trudeau raised the issue on his congratulatory call with Biden, who said they would discuss further after Inauguration .....
— Richard Madan (@RichardMadan) January 18, 2021
Whoa.
And after spending $1.5 billion to develop the pipeline, which runs through Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota and Nebraska, according to the Canadian CBC map linked here, Canadians are threatening lawsuits.
On Sunday, [Alberta Premier Jason] Kenney said in a statement posted to social media that he's deeply concerned that Biden may repeal the pipeline's presidential permit.
"Doing so would kill jobs on both sides of the border, weaken the critically important Canada-U.S. relationship and undermine U.S. national security by making the United States more dependent on OPEC oil imports in the future," Kenney said.
Kenney said should the U.S. repeal the permit, "Alberta will work with TC Energy to use all legal avenues available to protect its interest in the project."
And it shouldn't be a surprise - they threatened lawsuits earlier. According to Canada's Global News:
Billions of dollars in lawsuits will likely result if Joe Biden is elected U.S. president this November and carries out a threat to cancel the presidential permit allowing operation of the Keystone XL pipeline, Canadian observers say.
The promised action by the leading U.S. Democratic Party candidate, confirmed by his campaign office on Monday, would also deprive U.S. Gulf Coast refineries of a fresh supply of vital Canadian heavy oil, leaving them dependent on imports from countries such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, they add.
Which is a heckuva sorry picture, alienating Canada in order to make America more oil-dependent on Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. What a tradeoff. What a priority. What diplomacy. And didn't Joe Biden promise to patch up relations with America's friends? What kind of 'friends' punch their friends in the face?
Biden of course, is doing this, because he means to put his campaign donors, in the billionaire green lobby, first.
It gets worse. American jobs will be lost, too -- some 42,000 of them, direct and indirect of the project, according to CNN Business of all places. With the flick of Joe's pen, 40,000 American workers are going to lose their jobs. As Biden has said of coal miners he means to put out of business: Learn to code.
Way to go, Joe, alienating the Canadians already and not even sworn in as president. As former all-purpose swamp thing Bob Gates has observed: Joe Biden has been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” So much for those 47 years of experience. Biden gets it wrong every time and alienating a close neighbor and ally like Canada, just as he's annoyed Mexico and Brazil, is amateur hour.
Image credit: Flappiefh, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 3.0