Keystone demise prompts job cuts

TC Energy Corp. has let go 1,000 workers in both the U.S. and Canada after President Joe Biden cancelled the Keystone XL oil pipeline project.

“A majority of the 1,000 are unioned workers who have been constructing on both sides of the border,” Terry Cunha, a spokesman for the Calgary-based company, said Thursday by email.

Biden withdrew a permit to build the pipeline within hours of assuming office Wednesday. Construction of the pipeline, which would have transported more than 800,000 barrels a day of oilsands crude from Alberta to Nebraska, had already started last year after the government of Alberta invested $1.5 billion into the project to jump-start work.

Building of the controversial, cross-border conduit that was first proposed more than a decade ago was authorized by president Donald Trump in 2017, just over a year after president Barack Obama rejected the project on environmental grounds.

Alberta, home to the world's third largest oil reserves, viewed the line as essential for delivering its heavy crude to U.S. refineries at a time when alternate supplies from Latin America were dwindling. Environmentalists argued that the pipeline would stimulate expansion of carbon-intensive oilsands production, worsening global warming.

On Wednesday, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney lashed out at the decision by the new U.S. administration.

“This is a gut punch to the Alberta and Canadian economies,” Kenney said in a news conference Wednesday. “It's an insult.”

Kenney said PM Justin Trudeau should demand the new U.S. administration sit down and discuss the project in the context of environmental, climate and security policy. If that fails, Canada should be willing to impose “meaningful” punitive measures against its biggest trading partner. Biden's decision Wednesday will cost more than 2,000 people their jobs working to build the project, Kenney said.

The pipeline is one of three projects that Alberta's oilsands producers were counting on to get their crude to foreign markets after struggling for years with a lack of export pipelines. Environmentalists argue the pipeline would worsen global warming by stimulating carbon-intensive oilsands development.