The Biden campaign has promised to shut down the Keystone Pipeline that would bring Canadian oil into the U.S. Biden’s allies in the climate lobby also want to shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline that has been in operation since 2007. These are all part of “Blue Collar” Joe’s plan to phase out oil. Sounds like he’s a real friend to the roughnecks and construction workers who build America’s pipelines.
Sadly for Mr. Biden, shutting down pipelines is largely symbolic. Canadian oil is still going to make it to market, but getting it there will be more expensive and more dangerous to boot. Oil will come in via rail and truck, which may get cheaper if autonomous driving is adopted in the trucking industry.
There’s some potential irony for you. Imagine a Tesla semi running down the road driverless with a full load of Canadian crude.
The initial winners from Biden’s no pipeline policy are likely to be rails and most existing pipelines.
The WSJ has more in Biden’s pipeline proposals.
President-elect Joe Biden’s campaign promise to phase out oil probably signals the end of the long-delayed Keystone XL oil pipeline and threatens the future of Dakota Access, another major crude conduit.
Obstructing pipeline projects is one way Mr. Biden could accelerate America’s shift toward renewable energy, by making oil more difficult and expensive to move around. Other policies that require legislative signoff would be more challenging to implement unless Democrats won control of the Senate.
“In the absence of legislation, you’re going to try to do what you can through administrative action,” said Christine Tezak, managing director at energy research firm ClearView Energy Partners LLC.
Mr. Biden’s campaign has said he would revoke a presidential permit that Keystone XL needs to cross the U.S.-Canadian border. The move is likely to doom the $8 billion initiative to bring crude from the Canadian oil sands to the American Midwest.
Mr. Biden hasn’t publicly weighed in on Dakota Access, though Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, as a U.S. senator, joined dozens of members of Congress in filing a legal brief earlier this year supporting efforts to shut down the pipeline, which runs some 1,200 miles from North Dakota to Illinois and has been operating since 2017.
Native American tribes, environmentalists and landowners have been trying for years to block the projects, which have become symbols in the fight to keep fossil fuels in the ground.
Keystone XL is particularly vulnerable because it isn’t running more than a decade after being proposed, the result of legal and permitting delays. The expansion of the existing Keystone pipeline, which would run from Canada to Nebraska, requires U.S. authorization to cross the international border.
Mr. Biden can unilaterally rescind the permit President Trump granted last year.
Read more here.