Biden Halts Construction of Controversial Oil Pipeline

On the first day of his presidency, Joe Biden will likely also end the construction of a controversial oil pipeline through vulnerable natural areas in the United States.

 

“Keystone XL pipeline license revocation,” according to a memo from Biden’s transition team, is one of the so-called presidential orders that Biden will carry out once he sits in the White House. The pipeline, worth $ 9 billion, will carry oil from Alberta, Canada to the state of Nebraska.

But the project has been delayed due to legal proceedings. The oil pipeline has met opposition from Indian tribes who own parts of the land and opposition from conservationists.

The plan was shelved under President Barack Obama, but in 2017 President Trump signed a decree reversing it and ordering the leadership’s accelerated construction.

According to the broadcaster, CBC News’s memo is a more extended version of one that already appeared in the media last weekend. It contained a dozen decisions that Biden wants to take immediately after he is sworn in. For example, he wants his country to return to the Paris climate agreement.

Biden also wants to lift the travel ban to the US from Muslim countries, ban evictions from home during the corona pandemic, temporarily suspend student loan payments, reunite immigrant children who are now separated from their parents impose a mask on federal government buildings and public transportation.