Nebraska pumps new life into delayed project

Route gets OK, but path isn’t the one company wanted.

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 company that hopes to build it and could mean more time is needed to study the changes.

The Nebraska Public Ser- vice Commission’s vote also is likely to face court challenges and may even require

another federal analysis of the route, if the project’s opponents get their way.

“This decision opens up a whole new bag of issues that we can raise,” said Ken Win- ston, an attorney represent- ing environmental groups

that have long opposed the project.

Environmental activists, American Indian tribes and some landowners have fiercely opposed the proj- ect 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 proceed 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 the oil by trains.

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.

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 it planned to proceed with building the pipeline — which would carry an estimated 830,000 barrels of oil a day — and would take into account the Nebraska decision as well as whether it has lined up enough longterm contracts to ship oil.