News / Politics

Trump signs orders advancing controversial oil pipelines

Tuesday, 24 January 2017 6:45 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 24 January 2017 6:45 PM ]

Protesters march along the pipeline route during a protest against the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in St. Anthony, North Dakota, November 11, 2016. (Photo by Reuters)

US President Donald Trump has signed executive orders clearing the way for the construction of two controversial oil pipelines to move forward.

Before taking office, Trump indicated support for completion of the Dakota Access pipeline and resumption of work on the Keystone XL project.

The most immediate concern would be green-lighting the $3.8 billion Dakota Access project, which was the focus of vigorous protests from Native American tribes and environmentalists last year.

Led by the Standing Rock Sioux, more than 100 Native American tribes have warned that the four-state pipeline would destroy their sacred sites and contaminate their water resources.

The 1,100-mile (1,770-km) pipeline would be the first to transport crude oil from Bakken shale, a vast oil formation in North Dakota, to refineries in the US Gulf Coast.

The US Army Corps of Engineers decided to halt the project late last year to explore other routes for the pipeline, and in January said it would begin an environmental assessment that could further delay the project.

It was not clear if Trump’s order supersedes that move.

US President Donald Trump speaks before signing an executive order in the Oval Office at the White House on January 24, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

In an Oval Office signing before reporters on Tuesday, the new Republican president said both projects would be subject to renegotiation.

As he signed the order on the Keystone project, Trump said it would create a "lot of jobs, 28,000 jobs, great construction jobs."

“I am very insistent that if we’re going to build pipelines in the United States, the pipe should be made in the United States,” he said.

“We’re going to put a lot of workers, a lot of steelworkers back to work. We will build our own pipes, we will build our own pipelines, like we used to in the old days,” the president added.

During his presidential campaign, Trump said that the Barack Obama administration’s reluctance to give the go-ahead to the projects was indicative of the Democratic Party's anti-business attitudes.

Obama had rejected the Keystone pipeline, which would bring Canadian crude from Alberta into the US Gulf, in 2015 following seven years of protest by environmentalists.

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