Great short summary of Harvard’s Environmental & Energy Law Program on the environmental review for pipelines and executive orders from 2019. I did not realize that not only did Trump rubberstamp Keystone XL (which was later undone by Biden), but he also kneekapped the environmental reviews for pipelines in general. Not sure whether that was later undone by Biden. To do so he relied on a trick that the Republicans already attempted in Congress when Obama was still president–although Obama called their bluff. The rule he introduced states that the Department of State has 60 days after an application is received to collect information on the basis of which the president then makes a decision. Since not a lot of information can be collected in 60 days, this makes it easier for the president to rubberstamp such applications. As a side note, Obama’s response back in the days was to deny the application, stating that not enough information could be collected to confidentially determine whether the project is in the national interest.
For attribution, please cite this work as
Barg (2021, April 29). Julian Barg: Pipeline environmental review. Retrieved from https://www.jbarg.net/posts/2021-04-29-pipeline-environmental-review/
BibTeX citation
@misc{barg2021pipeline,
author = {Barg, Julian},
title = {Julian Barg: Pipeline environmental review},
url = {https://www.jbarg.net/posts/2021-04-29-pipeline-environmental-review/},
year = {2021}
}