Nebraska board OKs Keystone XL pipeline

LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraska regulators Monday approved a Keystone XL oil pipeline route through the state, breathing new life into the long-delayed $8 billion project, although the chosen pathway is not the one preferred by the pipeline operator and could require more time to study the changes.

The Nebraska Public Service Commission’s vote also is likely to face court challenges and may require another federal analysis of the route, if project opponents get their way.

“This decision opens up a whole new bag of issues that we can raise,” said Ken Winston, an attorney representing environmental groups that have long opposed the project.

Environmental activists, American Indian tribes and some landowners have fought the project since it was proposed by TransCanada Corp in 2008. It would carry oil from Canada through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska to meet the existing Keystone pipeline, where it could move as far as the U.S. Gulf Coast. Business groups and some unions support the project as a way to create jobs and reduce the risk of shipping oil by trains that can derail.

President Barack Obama’s administration studied the project for years before finally rejecting it in 2015 because of concerns about carbon pollution. President Donald Trump reversed that decision in March.

The route approved 3-2 by the Nebraska commission would be five miles longer than the one TransCanada preferred and would require an additional pumping station. Commissioners who voted for it said the alternative route would affect less rangeland for endangered species. The commission was not allowed to take into account a leak last week of 210,000 gallons from the existing Keystone pipeline onto South Dakota farmland because pipeline safety is a federal responsibility.

TransCanada CEO Russ Girling issued a statement after the ruling saying the company would study “how the decision would impact the cost and schedule of the project.”

TransCanada has said that it would announce in late November or early December whether to proceed with the pipeline — which would carry an estimated 830,000 barrels of oil a day — and would take into account the Nebraska decision.

The company submitted three proposed routes to the Nebraska commission. The preferred route would have taken a more direct diagonal north to south path across the state and a third route was rejected because it would have crossed the environmentally-fragile Sandhills area.

Keystone XL would expand the existing Keystone pipeline network that went into service in July 2010. The current pipeline runs through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas and extends east into Missouri and Illinois.

More than 90 percent of Nebraska landowners along TransCanada’s preferred route have agreed to let the company bury the pipeline beneath their property, but those who oppose it have managed to thwart the project for years. Approval of the route gives TransCanada the ability to seize the land of holdout landowners through eminent domain. The company has said it will use eminent domain only as a last resort.

Jane Kleeb, executive director of Bold Alliance, a pipeline opposition group, said her coalition still needed to review its options, but added, “We will stand and fight every inch of the way.”

Opponents hope the change in the route through Nebraska will require a new review by the U.S. State Department.