Forty-two congressional Republicans asked President Donald J. Trump “to take any appropriate action necessary to move construction forward” on the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline.
Their Dec. 14 request came more than a month after a federal district judge in Montana vacated a March 2017 US Department of State record of decision authorizing the project and ordered further environmental reviews in response to a lawsuit by environmental organizations (OGJ Online, Nov. 9, 2018).
US District Judge Brian Morris’s Nov. 8 ruling “has brought real and immediate consequences, halting critical pre-construction activities and invalidating the approval issued by your administration,” US Sens. Steve Daines (Mont.) and John Hoeven (ND), Reps. Greg Gianforte (Mont.) and Kevin Cramer (ND), and 38 other US Senate and House Republicans said in their letter to the president.
The Keystone XL project will bring nearly 6,600 high-paying jobs in the near term and nearly $4 billion of new capital investment in 2019 alone, they maintained. “In fact, pre-construction activities enjoined by the recent federal court decision are leaving nearly 700 jobs for hard-working Americans in the balance,” the group said.
“While we believe that it is important to conduct environmental reviews, we also believe that further review will not contribute to the existing body of science that already supports pipeline construction, and instead will have a significant impact on our rural communities,” the Senate and House GOP members told the president.
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