Trump Clears Keystone XL And Dakota Access Pipelines Four Days Into Presidency, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Two Pipelines Rejected On Environmental Grounds Had Stayed Rejected

WASHINGTON. Flanked by aides and a stack of executive paperwork in the Oval Office Tuesday, President Donald J. Trump signed a series of memoranda reviving the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, resolving the long-standing concern that two projects halted on environmental grounds were going to remain halted on environmental grounds.

The action, taken on the fourth full day of the Trump presidency, restored momentum to a pair of crude oil pipelines that the Obama administration had stopped after years of review. The State Department had rejected the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry roughly 830,000 barrels of Canadian tar sands crude per day toward the Gulf Coast, on the grounds that it conflicted with U.S. climate commitments. The Army Corps of Engineers had separately declined to grant the easement needed for the Dakota Access pipeline to cross beneath Lake Oahe, the reservoir that supplies drinking water to the Standing Rock Sioux, pending a fuller environmental study.

"We're going to renegotiate some of the terms, and if they like, we'll see if we can get that pipeline built," said Trump, who described the pipelines as a source of "a lot of jobs" while signing the memoranda. "A lot of jobs, 28,000 jobs."

Officials clarified that the studies the Obama administration had ordered were precisely the obstacle the memoranda were designed to remove. "The previous administration left these projects tangled up in environmental review, tribal consultation, and a completed federal recommendation against them," said one senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The President looked at all of that careful, deliberative process and identified it as the problem. By the end of the week the problem will be gone, and the pipeline will run directly beneath the water supply, which is what we mean by progress."

Sources noted that the President arrived at the decision with relevant background, having personally held stock in Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the Dakota Access pipeline, whose chief executive had donated to the Trump campaign. The administration described the overlap as a coincidence so complete it had effectively stopped being one.

The Standing Rock Sioux, who had spent months in protest encampments along the pipeline route, were reportedly informed that their concerns about an oil pipeline rupturing into their only water source had been heard, carefully considered, and scheduled for resolution by way of building the pipeline.

At press time, Trump had signed an additional directive requiring the pipelines to be built with American steel, a requirement administration officials confirmed would later be quietly waived for Keystone XL.