President Joe Biden is desperate to increase oil imports from Canada as the nation continues to struggle with high fuel prices — but is determined not to resurrect the Keystone XL pipeline, whose permit Biden canceled on his first day in office in 2021.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Biden administration is seeking to increase Canadian oil imports through rail, which is dirtier and riskier for the environment than pipelines, as Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has admitted.
The Journal reported Monday:
Biden administration officials are seeking ways to boost oil imports from Canada, people familiar with the situation say, but with one big caveat—they don’t want to resurrect the Keystone XL pipeline that President Biden effectively killed on his first day in office.
The people said deliberations are in early stages and that no clear-cut solutions have emerged.
…
Canada has ample reserves under its soil to meet U.S. demand, said Kevin Birn, an analyst with S&P Global Commodity Insights. It just doesn’t have enough pipeline capacity to pump it here, he said.
The Keystone XL pipeline was first shelved by the Obama administration despite passing an environmental review. President Donald Trump revived it, allowing construction to begin and creating thousands of jobs. But President Biden canceled it, in a symbolic gesture of support for environmentalists who want to wean the U.S. economy off fossil fuels due to climate change.
The Biden administration has defended its decision on Keystone XL by claiming that it would not have been completed on time to address the present fuel crisis. It has not answered the criticism that canceling Keystone XL sent a signal to oil and gas producers about the intention of the administration to limit future exploration and development, which it then duly did.
As Breitbart News noted at the time, Biden’s decision cost thousands of existing jobs and tens of thousands of future jobs — many of which were the “good, paying, union jobs” that Biden repeatedly promises will emerge from the “green” economy.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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