Rail cars arrive in Milton, N.D., loaded with pipe for the first Keystone Pipeline project in February, 2008.Eric Hylden/The Canadian Press
U.S. President Donald Trump signed an order Thursday authorizing the construction of a new pipeline that would partly revive the route of the abandoned Keystone XL line, removing a major hurdle from a project that would transport more than 500,000 barrels of oil a day from the Canadian border to Wyoming.
Whether that will translate to a corresponding line in Canada is unclear, however, as oil companies mull over how much crude they want to send south – particularly as talks around a new pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast gain momentum.
Bridger Pipeline LLC, a private oil transportation company based in Casper, Wyo., submitted a proposal for the pipeline to the Montana Department of Environmental Quality on Jan. 28. In its application, Bridger cited an executive order signed by Mr. Trump on Jan. 20, 2025, which declared a national energy emergency. The order directed federal agencies to expedite the production and transportation of domestic energy resources, including crude oil, and Bridger said the project would represent “a significant and meaningful investment in the U.S. energy economy.”
The permit signed by Mr. Trump on Thursday grants Bridger permission to construct, connect, operate and maintain pipeline facilities at the border.
The only infrastructure in Canada that could supply enough oil to the Bridger line is the partially constructed but long-dead Keystone XL system in Alberta. Work on the project was halted in 2021 after then-president Joe Biden revoked a key permit that had been issued by the previous Trump administration.
But Calgary-based South Bow Corp. has approached farmers and ranchers in southwestern Saskatchewan to resurvey land that lies along the original Keystone XL route. And the company announced in March it was soliciting binding commitments for long-term volumes on a 450,000-b/d pipeline it calls Prairie Connector, running from Hardisty, Alta., to multiple U.S. delivery points.
South Bow continues to evaluate the Prairie Connector, but the project remains in its early stages, company spokesperson Solomiya Martoiu said in an e-mail Thursday.
South Bow approaches Saskatchewan landowners in bid to revive Keystone XL pipeline
Tad True, an executive partner at Bridger Pipeline, said in a statement that the order “brings our proposed crude project one step closer to reality.” He thanked U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and the National Energy Dominance Council “for their hard work in getting this permit approved.”
Among industry, however, there is significant caution – if not outright skepticism – around whether the decree from Mr. Trump will actually lead to a pipeline being built, said Peter Tertzakian, deputy director of the ARC Energy Research Institute.
Keystone XL was first proposed in 2008, a dozen years before its death knell sounded. The project was long a target of climate-change activists in Canada and the United States, and was subject to years of protests, studies and court challenges, as well as presidential approvals and rejections.
While the permit signed Thursday removes a barrier for now, Mr. Tertzakian said in an interview, it’s not clear that it will be enough for producers to lock themselves in to long-term pipeline commitments and the tolls that accompany them.
“They’ve seen this movie before – they commit, then the whole thing gets axed with one pen stroke,” he said. “You would need to race to finish this thing, certainly before the 2028 [U.S.] elections.”
Alongside that skepticism is the question of whether oil producers even want to send their crude to the United States.
Canada’s federal government has pushed hard to diversify export markets away from the U.S. of late. That’s partly in response to Mr. Trump’s trade war, but in the case of energy, producers can also fetch a higher price for their oil by shipping to markets such as Asia.
The memorandum of understanding that Ottawa and Alberta signed in November, among other things, specified conditions for the construction of a new oil pipeline to the West Coast.
But if a producer commits large volumes to Prairie Connector or the Bridger expansion, Mr. Tertzakian said, they risk being unable to ship as much as they would like on other potential pipelines. That includes the new line to the coast being championed by Alberta, along with the Enbridge Mainline and Trans Mountain – both of which are expanding their transportation volumes.
If producers commit to a pipeline heading south, and then a line to the West Coast gets built, “they have to basically find the money to commit to the other,” he said. Given that filling a pipeline takes two to three times as much money as building one – and pipelines cost billions of dollars to construct – that’s a daunting prospect for any company, he added.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management expects to release a final environmental impact statement on the Bridger pipeline in the spring of 2027, with a decision to follow.