Keystone XL woes continue with lawsuit

Two days after the Nebraska Public Service Commission approved a route for the Keystone XL extension of TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline, a federal judge has allowed a lawsuit against it to proceed, international media reported on Wednesday.

The news, carried by CNBC, came on the same day as a Reuters report that the main 590,000-bpd pipeline would remain largely offline through the end of November after a leak of about 5,000 barrels of crude in South Dakota last week.

While the Nebraska authorities rejected TransCanada’s preferred route for Keystone XL and instead approved an alternate one, environmental activists insisted that they would continue attempts to reverse US President Donald Trump’s approval of the Nebraska leg of Keystone in court.

“They do not get their preferred route, the route that we have been fighting in courts over for eight years,” Jane Kleeb, a leader of the Nebraska anti-Keystone camp, told the New York Times. “What is wrong — and what we will continue to fight — is that this pipeline is still on the table.”

In a press release on Monday, TransCanada president and CEO Russ Girling also sounded a cautious note and said the company would study the proposed route.

“As a result of today’s decision, we will conduct a careful review of the Public Service Commission’s ruling while assessing how the decision would impact the cost and schedule of the project,” Girling said.