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keystone xl
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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Greenpeace Says Latest Keystone Pipeline Spill Shows Why Big Oil Targets Climate Activists
"Oil companies know that protest works," said Greenpeace USA's leader.
Apr 11, 2025
With cleanup efforts still underway in rural North Dakota on Friday after yet another Keystone crude oil pipeline spill, Greenpeace USA interim executive director Sushma Raman said that the incident "shows exactly why we need to protect protest, free speech, and the right to speak up against harm."
Keystone ruptured on Tuesday, spilling an estimated 3,500 barrels of oil into an agricultural field, according to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). That came just weeks after a North Dakota jury awarded Energy Transfer and its subsidiary more than $660 million in a case targeting Greenpeace for protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline.
"We know fossil fuels are unhealthy at every stage of their life cycle. There is no fail-safe way to transport oil and gas, and the risks unfairly fall on the people who live near the route, while the company reaps the benefits," Raman said in a Friday statement. "Everyday people, public watchdogs, and advocacy groups have a right to raise their voices and criticize a corporation when their health and livelihoods are on the line."
"Yet this type of ordinary advocacy is exactly what is under attack in the more than $660 million jury verdict against Greenpeace entities in a lawsuit brought by pipeline company Energy Transfer," added Raman, whose group is appealing the March decision. "Oil companies know that protest works—which is why they're trying to make the stakes so high no one will be willing to take the risk."
"There is no fail-safe way to transport oil and gas, and the risks unfairly fall on the people who live near the route, while the company reaps the benefits."
Environmentalist David Suzuki and co-writer Ian Hanington similarly wrote last week that while Greenpeace argues that it assisted with the protests against Dakota Access "at the request of the Standing Rock Sioux, the environmental group is clearly seen as a threat to oil and gas interests and is a high-profile target for increasingly common efforts to silence opposition."
"From Standing Rock to Wet'suwet'en territory in British Columbia and beyond, militarized law enforcement agencies are relying more often on use of force against land and water defenders, and companies are resorting to tactics such as SLAPPs ("strategic lawsuits against public participation" designed to silence opponents through costly, time-consuming legal processes)," they noted. "Those working to protect land, air, water, plants and animals, and our future face an increasingly uphill battle."
The pair stressed that "the lawsuit against Greenpeace is an attack on the right to protest and speak freely. It won't be the last. We should all stand with Standing Rock, and with organizations such as Greenpeace that are working for people and the planet and holding the line against the destructive fossil fuel industry."
One expert detailed some of the industry's destruction in comments to The Associated Press about the Keystone spill earlier this week:
The spill is not a minor one, said Paul Blackburn, a policy analyst with Bold Alliance, an environmental and landowners group that fought the pipeline's extension, called Keystone XL.
The estimated volume of 3,500 barrels, or 147,000 gallons of crude oil, is equal to 16 tanker trucks of oil, he said. That estimate could increase over time, he added.
Blackburn said the bigger picture is what he called the Keystone pipeline's history of spills at a higher rate than other pipelines. He compared Keystone to the Dakota Access oil pipeline since the latter came online in June 2017. In that period, Keystone's system has spilled nearly 1.2 million gallons (4.5 million liters) of oil, while Dakota Access spilled 1,282 gallons (4,853 liters), Blackburn said.
PHMSA said Thursday that it "has dispatched a total of eight inspectors to investigate the pipeline rupture," and Keystone's operator is "voluntarily committing to full cooperation with our investigation and pledging a series of corrective measures," including "a commitment not to restart the pipeline without prior approval."
The federal agency added Friday that as of 1:00 am local time, "five vacuum trucks have recovered and removed 1,170 barrels of crude oil. Cleanup operations are ongoing. PHMSA will continue to provide updated information as we receive it."
While Republican President Donald Trump aims to revive the Keystone XL project and boost the fossil fuel industry in general, one climate champion on Capitol Hill pointed to the spill as further proof of the need to phase out planet-wrecking oil and gas.
U.S. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the chamber's lead sponsor of Green New Deal legislation, said on social media this week: "The Keystone oil pipeline has ruptured and spilled—again. We must continue to fight for strong pipeline safety requirements and get rid of dirty fossil fuels once and for all."
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'Time Is Up': Democrats Target Trade Regime That Blocks Climate Progress
"Giant corporations have and continue to weaponize ISDS—a secretive and rigged arbitration system," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren. "It's time to shut the door and eliminate ISDS from all existing trade agreements once and for all."
May 29, 2024
Prominent Democrats on Wednesday called for ending corporate-backed arbitration provisions in trade agreements as the Sierra Club issued a report showing that fossil fuel companies use the provisions to block climate action.
The report calls for the U.S. government to not only stop signing trade agreements with Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions, as President Joe Biden has already done since taking office, but also end or modify existing agreements that have them. ISDS provisions allow companies to protect their investments in a foreign country and seek compensation from an ad hoc arbitration tribunal, rather than the country's courts, if they are threatened by legislation, regulation, or the cancellation of a project.
"While it has correctly rejected ISDS for future trade agreements, the Biden administration has made no effort to remove these egregious provisions from existing agreements," Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) said in a Sierra Club statement. "Powerful multinational corporations continue abusing ISDS to intimidate countries from strengthening environmental and human rights protections."
Many ISDS cases pit powerful corporations against low- and middle-income countries, but wealthy nations are also liable to be sued. TC Energy, a multinational fossil fuel company, sued the US for $15 billion following the discontinuation of the Keystone XL pipeline project, and Canada faces a $20 billion suit over a canceled liquefied natural gas project in Québec. Overall, nearly 20% of the world's 1,206 known ISDS arbitration cases have been brought by fossil fuel companies, according to the Sierra Club report.
The investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) regime gives polluters license to sue governments for their public interest policies, including those that would reduce the production of fossil fuels.
Now is the time to end ISDS for good.
— Iliana Paul (@iliana_m_paul) May 29, 2024
"ISDS mechanisms corruptly advance the power of big corporate polluters over the interests of the public and the planet. This new report from the Sierra Club makes it clear that ISDS's time is up," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in the group's statement. He, too, is pushing the Biden administration to remove ISDS provisions from existing agreements.
While the Sierra Club report focuses on ISDS's climate impacts, the authors argue that the effects of the provisions, which give corporations extraordinary power, are much broader. "The dangers of ISDS are stark not just for climate change, but for a broad swath of public interest policies including ones related to public health, labor protections and workers' rights, green jobs policies, and more," they wrote.
Democrats voiced agreement about the broad consequences of the provisions, which have been the subject of a growing chorus of criticism by politicians and public interests groups.
"Giant corporations have and continue to weaponize ISDS—a secretive and rigged arbitration system that multinational companies use to bypass domestic courts and challenge protections for the environment, workers, and consumers around the world. It's time to shut the door and eliminate ISDS from all existing trade agreements once and for all," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in the Sierra Club statement.
In November, Sierra Club, Public Citizen, the AFL-CIO and more than 200 other organizations called on the Biden administration to dismantle ISDS provisions between the U.S. and countries in the Americas, saying that the president should "free public interest policies from the shadow of ISDS."
That followed an April letter to Biden in which more than 300 law and economics professors, including Nobel laureate and Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz, called for an end to ISDS in existing trade agreements, arguing that there's a "bipartisan consensus" for such reform.
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