This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/09/us/politics/keystone-xl-pipeline-blocked.html

The article has changed 7 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
Keystone XL Pipeline Construction Blocked by Federal Judge Judge Blocks the Disputed Keystone XL Pipeline in a Setback for Trump’s Energy Agenda
(about 5 hours later)
A federal judge in Montana on Thursday blocked construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to allow the State Department to provide a fuller explanation of how the 1,184-mile project would affect the environment. Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter.
The judge, Brian M. Morris of the District of Montana, criticized the Trump administration for its failure to provide a “reasoned explanation” for its position about the pipeline’s impact on the climate. Construction could have begun as early as next year. WASHINGTON — A federal judge late Thursday blocked construction of the disputed Keystone XL oil pipeline, saying the Trump administration “simply discarded” the effect the project would have on climate change.
“The Department instead simply discarded prior factual findings related to climate change to support its course reversal,” Judge Morris wrote in his decision. The ruling by Judge Brian Morris of the United States District Court for Montana repudiates one of Donald J. Trump’s first acts as president. Two days after taking office, Mr. Trump signed an executive order approving the Keystone pipeline that had been blocked by former President Barack Obama because of environmental concerns.
Environmental and Native American groups that have fought the pipeline called Judge Morris’s ruling a major victory and a setback for the Trump administration’s environmental and energy policies. In saying that no work can go forward until the government more fully reviews the pipeline’s environmental impact, the ruling tees up another potentially contentious legal battle over climate change with a president who dismisses mainstream science and whose administration is also seeking to block a landmark lawsuit on behalf of children asking the government to stop the rise of planet-warming gases.
“The Trump administration tried to force this dirty pipeline project on the American people, but they can’t ignore the threats it would pose to our clean water, our climate and our communities,” said Doug Hayes, an attorney for the Sierra Club, one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by environmentalist groups against the State Department and TransCanada. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
President Barack Obama rejected the $8 billion project in late 2015, saying it would undermine American leadership in curbing reliance on carbon fuels. Environmental groups hailed the decision as a major victory in the long-running battle over Keystone, which has spanned more than a decade and become a symbol of the political battle over climate change. The nearly 1,200-mile pipeline from TransCanada Corp. would carry about 800,000 barrels of petroleum a day from the Canadian oil sands to Gulf Coast refineries.
But President Trump reversed that decision in March 2017, shortly after he was inaugurated, and the State Department granted the pipeline giant TransCanada a permit for construction. TransCanada did not respond to a request for comment. Construction could have begun as early as next year.
At the time, Mr. Trump said the pipeline — which would connect oil producers in Canada and North Dakota to refineries on the Gulf Coast — was vital to economic growth. “Keystone XL would be a disaster for the climate and for the people and wildlife of this country,” Jackie Prange, senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement Thursday.
Environmentalists have long fought the pipeline’s construction on the grounds that it would worsen climate change. The oil industry has said the pipeline would help the United States retain its energy independence for decades. If completed, the Keystone XL would transport up to 830,000 barrels of oil a day. Judge Morris found that in reviving Keystone, the Trump administration did not adequately account for how a decline in oil prices might affect the pipeline’s viability. In addition, the government’s analysis did not fully study the potential for oil spills or the cumulative effects of greenhouse gas emissions from the Keystone pipeline in combination with a pipeline approved in 2009, the Alabama Clipper.
In giving the go-ahead, the State Department said it “considered a range of factors, including, but not limited to, foreign policy; energy security; environmental, cultural and economic impacts; and compliance with applicable law and policy.” The ruling specifically takes the Trump administration to task for failing to address the Obama administration’s arguments about climate change, including the need to keep rising global temperatures at safe levels as a basis for denying the pipeline permit.
Judge Morris issued a 54-page ruling in the lawsuit against the State Department and TransCanada. The plaintiffs — Northern Plains Resource Council, Bold Alliance, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club — filed the lawsuit in March 2017 in the United States District Court for the District of Montana. When Mr. Obama rejected the Keystone permit in 2015, he was weeks away from negotiating an international global warming accord in Paris, and the administration also argued the pipeline would undercut United States leadership in curbing global reliance on fossil fuels.
The Trump administration failed to present facts or a “reasoned explanation” to those arguments as required, Judge Morris wrote.
Rather, the government had declared that it was embracing a policy shift toward “energy security, economic development and infrastructure” and noted that there had been “numerous developments related to global action to address climate change.”
The judge said an administration had the right to reverse a previous policy, but still must back up its reason for doing so with facts. The Trump administration did not do that, Judge Morris found.
“The Department instead simply discarded prior factual findings related to climate change to support its course reversal,” he wrote. He cited a United States Supreme Court ruling that noted, “An agency cannot simply disregard contrary or inconvenient factual determinations that it made in the past, any more than it can ignore inconvenient facts when it writes on a blank slate.”
The Trump administration or TransCanada could appeal Judge Morris’s ruling to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
For more news on climate and the environment, follow @NYTClimate on Twitter.