Barack Obama tried to fundamentally transform this country.
He thought one signature achievement would stand the test of time.
And Barack Obama just got some bad news that will wreck his climate legacy.
The Keystone XL Pipeline Revival Obama Never Saw Coming and Trump Is Ready to Sign
Obama killed the Keystone XL permit in November 2015 – the same week world leaders gathered in Paris for climate talks – and the timing was not a coincidence.
Environmental groups had spent years pressuring him.
Bill McKibben of 350.org called the rejection a victory that gave Obama "new stature as an environmental leader."
The Natural Resources Defense Council called it "a courageous leap forward in the climate fight."
Obama got his standing ovation in Paris.
America got the bill.
Biden's own Department of Energy later admitted in a congressionally mandated report that canceling Keystone had cost up to 59,000 jobs and wiped out up to $9.6 billion in economic impact.
The American Petroleum Institute documented that construction alone would have poured $3.4 billion into the U.S. economy.
That is what Obama traded for applause from environmentalists.
When Biden canceled the project again on his first day in office in 2021, he finished what Obama started – triggering TC Energy to write down $2.2 billion and costing Alberta taxpayers $1.3 billion.
Union workers who had been told they had jobs – over 8,000 of them already under contract – lost those jobs.
Prairie Connector Is the Keystone XL Pipeline Obama Thought He Buried for Good
Here is what Obama never counted on.
The pipe he killed is still in the ground.
Canadian company South Bow just launched a formal revival effort this month – a new project running the same corridor Obama blocked, using the same infrastructure Biden left sitting in the dirt.
Energy companies have until March 30 to sign long-term commitments.
A second American company filed a separate pipeline proposal with Montana in January, explicitly citing Trump's national energy emergency order as the reason they expect fast-track approval.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney raised the revival directly with Trump in October.
Trump had already made his position clear: "The company building the Keystone XL Pipeline that was viciously jettisoned by the incompetent Biden administration should come back to America and get it built – NOW!"
That is not a president who needs convincing.
Trump Is Delivering Energy Independence While Obama Begged OPEC for Oil
Obama told Americans in 2015 that Keystone "would not make a meaningful long-term contribution to our economy" and that shipping Canadian crude south would not improve energy security.
That argument aged badly.
Within months of Biden's 2021 cancellation, gas prices surged.
The administration that killed Keystone in the name of energy independence ended up begging OPEC to pump more oil and lobbying Venezuela and Saudi Arabia to fill the gap.
Trump did not make that call.
Trump's model is North American energy dominance – locking in Canadian crude from a friendly neighbor instead of being held hostage by regimes that hate America.
Obama got his climate legacy.
Trump is getting the pipeline.
McKibben himself warned in 2015 that "the next president could undo all this."
He was right.
But he didn’t count on it taking three presidents and eleven years.
Sources:
- "Obama Rejects Keystone XL Pipeline, Ending Years of Review," International Business Times, November 6, 2015.
- "Statement by the President on the Keystone XL Pipeline," White House Archives, November 6, 2015.
- "South Bow Plan to Revive Parts of Keystone XL Needs Trump Approval," CBC News, March 2, 2026.
- "Keystone XL Revival Gains Momentum as New Pipeline Plan Emerges," OilPrice.com, March 11, 2026.
- "South Bow Approaches Saskatchewan Landowners in Bid to Revive Keystone XL," The Globe and Mail, March 2026.
- "Biden Admin Quietly Admits Canceling Keystone XL Pipeline Cost Thousands of Jobs, Billions of Dollars," Fox News, January 5, 2023.
- "TC Energy Awards More Than $1.6 Billion in American Contracts to Build Keystone XL," TC Energy Press Release, October 28, 2020.
- "KXL a Year Later: Missed Opportunities to Boost America," American Petroleum Institute, January 20, 2022.
