Despite a pledge by the president, American steel won’t be required in the Keystone XL pipeline.
The Keystone XL pipeline won’t be required to use American-made steel to earn construction approval from the Trump administration, the White House said Friday, despite President Donald Trump’s repeated claims.
The president’s executive order mandating the use of U.S. steel is“specific to new pipelines or those that are being repaired,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday.
“Since this one is already current, under construction, the steel is already literally sitting there, it would be hard togo back ,” she said.
That’s welcome news to TransCanada Corp. as its moves forward with the $8 billion project. The pipeline would span 1,179 miles from Alberta through three states — Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska—before connecting to an existing network feeding crude to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries. The line would carry as much as 830,000 barrels of oil a day, including some from North Dakota’s Bakken shale.
In 2012, the company said it expected half of the 821,000 tons of steel needed to construct the pipeline to be produced inside of the United States. The remainder of the steel was expected to be imported from Canada, Italy and India.
But exempting Keystone XL from the president’s requirement to use U.S. steel would seem to fly in the face of Trump’s comments. Trump has boasted that he forced pipeline companies to agree to use U.S. steel in their projects.
During a Feb. 23 meeting with manufacturing CEOs at the White House, Trump told U.S. Steel Corp. CEO Mario Longhi “the pipe is coming from the U.S.” for the Keystone project, as well as Energy Transfer Partners’Dakota Access line.
“We put you heavy into the pipeline business because we approved, as you know, the Keystone Pipeline and Dakota,” Trump told Longhi. “But they have to buy — meaning, steel, so I’ll say U.S. Steel — but steel made in this country and pipelines made in this country.”
During a Feb. 16 news conference, the president said that in exchange for using “the powers of government to make that pipeline happen,” administration officials “want them to use American steel.”