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earthjustice
Trump Approval of 'Keystone Light' Pipeline Blasted as Yet Another Gift to Big Oil
"More pipelines mean more drilling, more waste, and more spills. And when spills happen, it's communities, landowners, and tribes who are left dealing with the contamination, not the companies profiting from it," said one critic.
May 01, 2026
"We know that if this project goes through, our land and our water are in danger. Our future is in danger," warned Krystal Two Bulls, one of many community, conservation, and Indigenous group leaders speaking out after President Donald Trump granted a cross-border permit to what critics called "nothing more than an attempt to resurrect the unpopular Keystone XL pipeline."
Trump's permit for the Bridger Pipeline Expansion Project authorizes various "petroleum products, including gasoline, kerosene, diesel, and liquefied petroleum gas," The Associated Press reported Thursday, but Bridger spokesperson Bill Salvin said the company is currently focused on crude oil—550,000 barrels of which could flow daily from Canada, through Montana, to Guernsey, Wyoming, if the pipeline is completed.
"Water protectors are standing up again, like we have always done against all those who threaten Mother Earth," Two Bulls, an Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne organizer from Lame Deer, Montana, and executive director of Honor the Earth, said Friday. "We fought against the Keystone XL pipeline proposed for these very same lands and won back in 2021. We will fight and win again against the Bridger pipeline."
Shortly after entering office in 2021, then-President Joe Biden revoked the presidential permit for Keystone XL—which Trump had signed during his first term—as part of the Democrat's efforts to combat the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.
While Biden faced criticism from climate advocates for the oil and gas projects he did allow, Trump took a swipe at him on Thursday, telling reporters: "Slightly different from the last administration. They wouldn't sign a pipeline deal, and we have pipelines going up."
Trump—who campaigned on a pledge to "drill, baby, drill" and returned to the White House last year with financial help from Big Oil—also dismissed safety concerns about pipelines, saying: "By the way, they're way underground. They're not a problem. Nobody even knows they're there. It's so crazy. But they wouldn't approve anything having to do with a pipeline."
As the AP detailed:
Bridger Pipeline and other subsidiaries of True Company have been responsible for several major pipeline accidents including more than 50,000 gallons (240,000 liters) of crude that spilled into the Yellowstone River and fouled a Montana city's drinking water supply in 2015, a 45,000-gallon diesel spill in Wyoming in 2022 and a 2016 spill that released more than 600,000 gallons (2.7 million liters) of crude in North Dakota, contaminating the Little Missouri River and a tributary.
Subsidiaries of True agreed to pay a $12.5 million civil penalty to settle a federal lawsuit over the North Dakota and Montana spills.
Salvin said Bridger Pipeline in the years since the Yellowstone spill developed an AI-based leak detection system that allows it to be notified more quickly when there are problems. It also plans to bore 30 to 40 feet (9 to 12 meters) beneath major rivers including the Yellowstone and Missouri to reduce the chances of an accident. The 2015 accident occurred on a line that was constructed in a shallow trench at the bottom of the river.
A public comment submitted to the Trump administration by the legal group Earthjustice on behalf of Honor the Earth, Sierra Club, WildEarth Guardians, and a dozen other organizations acknowledges concerns about this pipeline's potential impacts to water, land, the climate, air quality, cultural resources, recreation, and more—and called for an intense federal review of the project.
"We know how this system works: More pipelines mean more drilling, more waste, and more spills. And when spills happen, it's communities, landowners, and tribes who are left dealing with the contamination, not the companies profiting from it," Rebecca Sobel, climate and health director at WildEarth Guardians, said Friday. "Oil and gas infrastructure fails every day in this country, and expanding that system only increases the likelihood of spills and long-term contamination."
Sierra Club Montana chapter director Caryn Miske stressed that "while the Trump administration kills affordable energy projects and jobs across the country, it is continuing to side with wealthy corporations and oil executives looking to increase profit regardless of the risks to Montana's treasured waterways and to families and businesses struggling with high energy costs. These policies aren't about fair or free markets, it's welfare for corporations and pollution for everyone else."
Earthjustice is also representing 350 Montana, Center for Biological Diversity, Families for a Livable Climate, Montana Environmental Information Center, Montana Health and Climate, Mountain Mamas, Red Medicine LLC, Western Environmental Law Center, Western Organization of Resource Councils, Western Watersheds Project, Wild Montana, and Wyoming Outdoor Council.
"The proposed Bridger tar sands pipeline is an environmental disaster waiting to happen," declared Jenny Harbine, managing attorney with Earthjustice's Northern Rockies office. "The Trump administration appears more than willing to limit public engagement to force this project through."
"Communities and tribes in the Northern Rockies have a right to know how this could impact their water sources, historic resources, and ways of life," Harbine added. "If the administration attempts to sidestep that legal obligation, we’ll see them in court."
Separately on Friday, Anthony Swift, a longtime leader in the fight against the pipeline and current senior strategist for global nature at Natural Resources Defense Council, said that "no matter what you call the project, the environmental concerns that animated the fight over Keystone XL are no less acute today. Keystone Light will threaten water supplies and exacerbate climate change. This is the moment to get off the oil roller coaster, not double down on the dirtiest oil on the planet."
"The Trump administration has been lobbing gifts to Big Oil since its first day in office. This is the latest in a long, long, long list of favors that show the oil industry is getting a great return on its billion-dollar investment in the president's campaign," Swift added. "President Trump has repeatedly said that America does not need Canada's oil, so we certainly don't need Keystone Light."
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Green Groups Sue Trump to Stop 'Exceptionally Risky' Deep-Water Drilling Project in Gulf of Mexico
"Ultra-deep-water drilling is ultradangerous, full stop," said an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity.
Apr 20, 2026
Determined to prevent a "sequel" to the worst oil spill in US history, BP's deadly Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, six environmental protection groups on Monday sued the Trump administration over what they said was its illegal approval of the British fossil fuel giant's $5 billion plan to drill in the body of water's lowest depths off the coast of Louisiana.
BP has boasted that its planned Kaskida oil field is a "world-class project that reflects decades of technological innovation," but environmental legal firm Earthjustice argued that the company has failed to prove its has the "experience, expertise, and certified equipment to conduct safe drilling under extreme conditions" in waters deeper than 5,600 feet, where opponents of the plan say extreme pressure and temperatures will make a blowout and oil spill more likely than they'd be in a typical drilling project.
A "loss of well control" was blamed for the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill that killed 11 people, harmed and killed more than 100,000 birds and marine animals as well as untold numbers of fish, and devastated local economies—and that type of accident is 6-7 times more likely in an ultra-deep drilling project like Kaskida, according to Earthjustice.
The organization wrote in a regulatory filing last year when it was trying to block the project that "deep-water and ultra-deep-water oil spills and accidents are also much more difficult to respond to and contain.”
"BP did not show in its proposals that it will have the necessary containment capabilities in case the company needs to stop a blown-out well from spilling 4.5 million barrels of oil or more across the Gulf."
The group is representing Healthy Gulf, Turtle Island Restoration Network, Habitat Recovery Project, Sierra Club, and Center for Biological Diversity in the lawsuit, which argues that President Donald Trump's Interior Department adopted in its environmental analysis of Kaskida a severe underestimation—by about half a million barrels of oil—of what a worst-case scenario oil spill would look like.
"BP did not show in its proposals that it will have the necessary containment capabilities in case the company needs to stop a blown-out well from spilling 4.5 million barrels of oil or more across the Gulf," said Earthjustice.
Rachel Mathews, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, said it was "appalling that the Trump administration has authorized this deep-water drilling project without having information critical to preventing harm to marine life."
“This will put Rice’s whales, sea turtles, and other Gulf wildlife at terrible risk," said Mathews. "Ultra-deep-water drilling is ultradangerous, full stop.”
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's (BOEM) approval of the Kaskida project was preceded by several industry-friendly actions by the Trump administration, including a meeting last month of the federal Endangered Species Committee, which voted to exempt fossil fuel companies from following policies intended to protect endangered species in the Gulf. Advocates argued that the decision was made illegally because the panel is required to meet publicly.
The administration has also proposed weakening "well control" rules for offshore drilling operations, and the White House is consolidating the BOEM and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement—two agencies that were intentionally separated following the Deepwater Horizon disaster after an investigative commission found that conflicts of interest were created when they acted as one regulatory agency.
“Kaskida is emblematic of a new era in offshore oil extraction: corporate hoarding of risky, ultra-deep water leases in an attempt to monopolize the future of oil production, with little to no oversight from the Trump administration. We, as citizens of the Gulf South, are not standing for it,” said Martha Collins, executive director of Healthy Gulf. “BP has shown how they handle oil spills on this anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster—their risky drilling and inexperience at this great depth will ensure their continued legacy of the Gulf never being the same again.”
Despite the fact that the Trump administration has taken numerous actions to ramp up oil and gas production—as the US already produces record amounts of fossil fuels—those measures are doing little to reduce oil prices, noted Earthjustice.
“Offshore drilling is one of the riskiest kinds of oil extraction, but the Trump administration is ignoring the law to allow Big Oil CEOs to endanger coastal communities for the sake of corporate profit,” said Devorah Ancel, senior attorney at Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program. “This permit would allow BP to develop multiple ultra-deep high-pressure wells, which is already exceptionally risky, and with BP’s track record in the Gulf, coastal ecosystems face extraordinary danger. We’re suing the Trump administration to ensure the coastal communities that would suffer the consequences of BP’s actions get their day in court.”
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Trump EPA Risks Health of Millions With Giveaway to Corporate Polluters That Use Cancer-Causing Gas
"Walking back key regulations for ethylene oxide sterilizer facilities is essentially giving a highly polluting industry a get-out-of-jail-free card," said one campaigner.
Mar 13, 2026
While US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin on Friday presented a proposed policy change as a demonstration of the Trump administration's commitment to "ensuring lifesaving medical devices remain available," public health advocates warned that relaxing rules on emissions of the cancer-causing gas ethylene oxide puts millions of Americans at risk.
As The New York Times explained: "The move revived a long-running debate about the paradoxical effects of ethylene oxide on public health. While it plays a crucial role in sterilizing lifesaving medical devices like pacemakers and syringes, long-term exposure can cause leukemia and other types of cancer among people who work in or live near medical sterilization facilities."
The EPA proposal would amend the Biden administration's 2024 National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants for facilities that use ethylene oxide, which the agency estimated would have eliminated over 90% of dangerous pollution from the gas. The previous policy was cheered by organizations including Earthjustice, which sounded the alarm on Friday.
"The 2024 standards would have delivered enormous public health benefits. EPA knows that ethylene oxide is carcinogenic and determined that sterilizers can install effective and affordable pollution controls," said Earthjustice senior attorney Deena Tumeh. "EPA has no basis to repeal this well-supported rule. By rolling back the rule, the Trump EPA is bending the knee to the sterilizer industry at the expense of millions of people's health."
Darya Minovi, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists' (UCS) Center for Science and Democracy, similarly stressed that "this dangerous decision puts people across the United States and in Puerto Rico at a higher risk of breathing dangerous fumes known to cause respiratory irritation, nausea, blurred vision, headaches, and various cancers. Children are especially vulnerable to the cancer-causing harms of ethylene oxide exposure."
As Minovi detailed:
According to UCS analysis, nearly 14 million people in the United States live within five miles of at least one commercial sterilization facility, and more than 10,000 schools and childcare facilities fall within those areas. These communities are disproportionately made up of people of color or those who do not speak English as a first language...
This decision is a reckless and self-serving handout to big industry, which asked for this rule to be rolled back. This process sidestepped community input from the start and is an affront to communities that have unknowingly lived with ethylene oxide exposure for decades. These actions show, yet again, that this administration has little to no regard for the health and welfare of working people or any interest in protecting children from exposure to toxic chemicals.
Minovi declared that "ethylene oxide emissions controls need to be strengthened—not dismantled," an argument echoed by Jane Williams, executive director of California Communities Against Toxics and chair of the Sierra Club National Clean Air Team.
"Walking back key regulations for ethylene oxide sterilizer facilities is essentially giving a highly polluting industry a get-out-of-jail-free card. Sterilizers are some of the largest, most toxic chemical manufacturing facilities in the country,” said Williams. "Rather than regressing on key protections, these facilities need even more controls in place to ensure the safety of workers and nearby communities."
People who live near sterilizer facilities also spoke out against the proposed rule, which now faces a 45-day public comment period.
"We understand that industry applied heavy pressure to weaken the previously finalized rule. We also understand that industry remains more concerned with their profits than the lives of those who live near sterilizer facilities, like my community in Laredo," said Tricia Cortez, executive director of Rio Grande International Study Center in Texas.
"Sterilizer facilities like Midwest must be held accountable for their dangerous, cancer-causing emissions," she said. "We need an EPA that works to protect us, the people, not financial interests and corporations that continue to cause so much harm to so many."
Victor Alvarado, founder and coordinator for Comité Diálogo Ambiental, said that "I remember the EPA informing us that Steri-Tech's ethylene oxide emissions in my hometown of Salinas, Puerto Rico, were so high that we had one of the highest rates of toxic air cancer risk in the United States... Eliminating the new protections against ethylene oxide emissions is unjust."
The EPA proposal comes after President Donald Trump in July signed a series of proclamations easing pollution rules for over 100 facilities focused on energy, chemical manufacturing, iron ore processing, and sterile medical equipment. His "regulatory relief," as the Republican called it, applied to dozens of sterilization plants.
The Southern Environmental Law Center and Natural Resources Defense Council responded by filing a federal lawsuit on behalf of CleanAIRE NC, Sustainable Newton, Savannah Riverkeeper, and Virginia Interfaith Power & Light.
"We always knew the presidential exemptions issued last year were part a broader plan to put the interests of corporate polluters above the health and well-being of American families," Sustainable Newton president Maurice Carter said Friday. "But we won't stop fighting to protect our community by demanding commonsense, reasonable measures that even the EPA has said would reduce harmful emissions by 90% and lower cancer risks by 92%."
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