President Obama did everything in his power to stifle the American energy industry.
Needless to say, there’s a new sheriff in town. Donald Trump’s first order of business? Getting the Keystone Pipeline project underway. Per the Washington Examiner:
President Trump is preparing to take executive actions soon that will begin the process of unraveling former President Barack Obama’s climate change legacy, while clearing the way for the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Trump’s White House team will begin the climate rollback by striking down a controversial climate metric called the Social Cost of Carbon, which the Obama administration used to justify the cost of its environmental regulations.
The carbon cost formula has been a big target by Republicans who have criticized it as a hidden standard that few people have access to and that appeared to be directly controlled and tweaked by the Obama White House.
Trump plans to move soon on issuing the executive order to end the carbon metric, while issuing a second order to remove regulatory roadblocks for approving trans-border pipeline projects such as the Keystone XL project to connect Canada’s oil sands to U.S. refiners in the Gulf of Mexico, Bloomberg reported.
The Chamber of Commerce estimates that the Keystone Pipeline will create 20,000 jobs during manufacture and construction, as well as hundreds of millions in tax revenue for the states involved.