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Buy Photo Pipe for the Keystone XL Pipeline is being stored at a pipe yard in Northern Phillips County in anticipation of the beginning of construction in 2019. (Photo: TRIBUNE PHOTO/RION SANDERS)Buy Photo

U.S. District Judge Brian Morris issued an order Thursday blocking construction of the $8 billion Keystone XL Pipeline until further environmental analysis is conducted.

The decision comes as TransCanada is preparing to build the oil pipeline beginning in northern Montana, with pipe being shipped to the state by train and trucked to locations along the line.

TransCanada released a statement Friday saying it is reviewing the judge's decision.

"We remain committed to building this important energy infrastructure project," said Terry Cunha, communications manager for TransCanada.

More: Keystone order: Blow to Trump or overreach by judge?

President Donald J. Trump criticized the order.

President Donald Trump talks with reporters Friday before departing for France. He called a Montana's judge's decision blocking a permit for Keystone XL "a disgrace." (Photo: Evan Vucci, AP)

"Well, it was a political decision made by a judge," he said Friday as he headed to Europe to observe the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. "I think it’s a disgrace. It’s 48,000 jobs. I approved it; it’s ready to start."

Environmental groups that sued TransCanada and the U.S. Department of State in federal court in Great Falls called the decision to overturn the Trump administration-issued permit a landmark ruling.

More: Army of attorneys spar over Keystone pipeline in Great Falls court

In his decision, Morris said the government's analysis fell short on:

» The effects of the current oil prices on the viability of the pipeline.

» The cumulative effects of greenhouse gas emissions.

» A survey of potential Native American resources.

» And updated modeling of potential oil spills and recommended mitigation measures.

"The Department must supplement new and relevant information regarding the risk of spills," Morris wrote.

As for climate change, Morris noted that the department denied the permit in 2015 and relied heavily on the United State's role in climate leadership. That was under the Obama Administration.

Then, under the Trump administration, the department approved the permit, dismissing concerns about climate change.

The Trump Administration decision approving the project noted that “there have been numerous developments related to global action to address climate change, including announcements by many countries of their plans to do so” since the 2015 decision.

Morris said that statement fell short of a factually based determination, let alone a reasoned explanation, for the course reversal.

U.S. District Judge Brian Morris (Photo: File image)

“An agency cannot simply disregard contrary or inconvenient factual determinations that it made in the past, any more than it can ignore inconvenient facts when it writes on a blank slate," Morris wrote.

The reversal required a "reasoned explanation" but instead the State Department discarded prior factual findings related to climate change, the judge said.

Keystone XL Pipeline would transport up to 830,000 barrels per day of crude oil from Alberta, Canada and the Bakken Shale Formation in Montana to existing pipeline facilities near Steele City, Neb., from which the oil would be delivered to Cushing, Okla., and the Gulf Coast.

The U.S. portion of the line would run 875 miles through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. The rest of the 1,200-mile line is in Canada.

About 250 miles of the pipeline would be buried across six counties in Montana beginning on the border with Canada in Phillips County. TransCanada already as begun delivering pipe to Montana in expectation of construction beginning in 2019.

The Indigenous Environmental Network, North Coast Rivers Alliance, Northern Plains Resource Council and other groups sued TransCanada and the U.S. State Department in March to block the decision to issue a presidential permit allowing construction.

"I would call it a landmark ruling because it overturns a presidential decision purporting to find that a transboundary project is in the public interest," Stephan Volker, a Berkeley-based attorney for the plaintiffs, told the Tribune. "And Judge Morris correctly ruled it was not in the public interest because Secretary Kerry had found in a detailed ruling several years ago it was not in the public interest."

John Kerry was secretary of state when the Obama administration denied the presidential permit for the pipeline.

A presidential permit is required when a project crosses an international boundary. The secretary of state makes a recommendation, then the president decides.

"We have never had a ruling against a president overturning a substantive finding a project is in the public interest," Volker said. "That finding is required for transboundary projects. So it's unique to this kind of national project that affects multiple countries."

Dena Hoff, a Glendive farmer and member-leader of the Northern Plains Resource Council, called the ruling a victory for rule of law and common sense stewardship of land and water.

"All Americans should be proud that our system of checks and balances can still function even in the face of enormous strains," Hoff said.

The Fort Peck tribes of Montana have opposed the current location of the pipeline crossing on the Missouri River in Valley County, Montana because they say if there was an oil spill it could taint their downstream water system.

More: Montana tribes seek Keystone route change

The pipeline would cross the Milk River 1.6 miles west of Nashua, and the Missouri River just west of the mouth of the Milk. That location is 57 miles upstream from the intake of the Assiniboine and Sioux Rural Water Supply System.

Buy Photo The intake of the Assiniboine and Sioux Rural Water Supply System which serves the Fort Peck Indian Reservation and Dry Prairie Rural Water System in Valley, Roosevelt, Sheridan, and Daniels counties is located off Highway 13 in Roosevelt County 57 miles downstream from where the Keystone XL Pipeline will cross the Missouri River at its confluence with the Milk River. (Photo: TRIBUNE PHOTO/RION SANDERS)

TransCanada says the pipeline will be safe. At the Missouri River, the pipeline depth would be 54 feet below the lowest surveyed river elevation, and heavier-walled pipe with anti-corrosion coating would be used.

"Pipelines are the safest and most cost-effective form of overland crude oil transportation," according the environmental impact statement that was completed on the project.

The Obama Administration, citing climate change, had denied the permit, saying it wasn't in the national interest.

In approving the pipeline, the Trump Administration said the project would support U.S. priorities relating to energy security, economic development and infrastructure.

The environmental groups argued it would push the earth beyond its carrying capacity for carbon dioxide, and asked how that could be in the public's interest.

In the same case, Morris directed the government in August to supplement the 2014 final supplemental environmental impact statement to consider another alternative route through Nebraska.

More: Great Falls judge orders new federal review of Keystone XL pipeline

But the court had yet to decide on vacating the presidential permit granting permission to cross the international border between Canada and the United States at Montana.

Morris’s 54-page order overturns the Trump Administration’s approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline and issues an injunction preventing construction of the project until additional analysis occurs.

Staff Writer Phil Drake contributed to this story.

Read or Share this story: https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/2018/11/08/judge-blocks-construction-keystone-xl-pipeline-montana-fort-peck-climate-chagne/1938114002/</s>In A Setback For Trump, Judge Blocks Keystone XL Pipeline Construction

Enlarge this image toggle caption Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images

A U.S. district judge has issued an order blocking construction of the controversial transnational Keystone XL Pipeline until the State Department conducts further study of its impact on the environment.

Judge Brian Morris' 54-page order, issued late Thursday, overturns the Trump administrations's approval last year of the proposed 1,179-mile pipeline and at least temporarily prevents it from being built.

Although the decision does not permanently halt the pipeline's construction, it nevertheless comes as TransCanada, the Canadian company that owns Keystone, is preparing to start construction in Montana, shipping pipe to various locations throughout the state, the Great Falls Tribune reports.

The order stems from a lawsuit filed by the Indigenous Environmental Network and North Coast Rivers Alliance, which alleges that the State Department and TransCanada violated National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, the environmental law described in the order as "the basic national charter for protection of the environment."

Since its conception, the pipeline has sparked a backlash from environmentalists and indigenous peoples who say it violates historical treaty boundaries and would bring environmental problems.

In August, Judge Morris ruled that the State Department must supplement a more thorough study of potential environmental effects of the pipeline. He had yet to rule on vacating the permit itself.

In Thursday's ruling, Morris wrote that the State Department's analysis of potential environmental effects fell short of a "hard look" on the effects of current oil prices on the viability of Keystone, cumulative effects of greenhouse gas emissions, cultural resources and potential oil spills.

"These omissions require a remand with instructions to the Department to satisfy its obligations under NEPA," he wrote.

Morris also noted that in 2015, during the Obama administration, the State Department denied a permit to build the pipeline, citing environmental effects. At that time, the Department "relied heavily on the United States's role in climate leadership."

Then came policy shifts in the Trump administration.

Under President Trump, the State Department wrote "there have been numerous developments related to global action to address climate change, including announcements by many countries of their plans to do so" since the Obama administration's decision two years earlier.

That statement falls short of a "factually based determination, let alone a reasoned explanation, for the course reversal," Morris wrote.

"An agency cannot simply disregard contrary or inconvenient factual determinations that it made in the past, any more than it can ignore inconvenient facts when it writes on a blank slate," he continued.

The pipeline was first proposed in 2o08. If built, it would transport around 830,000 barrels of crude oil per day from Alberta, Canada, and the Bakken Shale Formation in Montana to facilities near Steele City, Neb.

The proposed U.S. portion of the pipeline would run about 875 miles through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. Another 1,200 miles would run through Canada.

Four days after Trump was sworn into office, he invited TransCanada to resubmit its permit application. He signed an executive order supporting its construction in March of last year.

NPR reached out to TransCanada early Friday for comment on the ruling but did not hear back by the time of publishing.

"Today's ruling is a decisive moment in our fight against the corporate polluters who have rushed to destroy our planet," said Marcie Keever, legal director at Friends of the Earth in a news statement. "Today, the courts showed the Trump administration and their corporate polluter friends that they cannot bully rural landowners, farmers, environmentalists and Native communities."

As NPR's Jeff Brady and Jason Slotkin have reported, "The oil industry and some labor unions have supported the pipeline, largely for the thousands of construction jobs it would provide. But those jobs are temporary. The State Department has estimated that once built, the pipeline will employ about 35 people."</s>Two other export pipelines - expansion of the TransMountain pipeline and Enbridge Inc.’s Line 3 pipeline replacement - also face uncertainty

Opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline demonstrate on the Dodge Street pedestrian bridge during rush hour in Omaha, Neb., on Nov. 1, 2017. A federal judge in Montana has blocked construction of the $8-billion Keystone XL pipeline to allow more time to study the project’s potential environmental impact. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Nati Harnik

TransCanada’s $10-billion Keystone XL pipeline project has suffered another setback after a U.S. federal judge blocked its construction to allow more time to study the potential environmental impact.

The Great Falls Tribune reports U.S. District Judge Brian Morris’ order on Thursday came as the Calgary-based energy giant was preparing to build the first stages of the oil pipeline in northern Montana.

Indigenous and environmental groups had sued TransCanada and the U.S. Department of State after Nebraska authorities approved an alternative route to the one TransCanada had proposed through the state.

The groups argued the U.S. State Department violated several acts in issuing a presidential permit for the pipeline without a proper environmental assessment of the changed route.

Morris said in his decision Thursday the government’s analysis didn’t fully study the cumulative effects of greenhouse gas emissions, the effects of current oil prices on the pipeline’s viability or include updated modelling of potential oil spills.

The proposed 1,897-kilometre pipeline would carry crude from Hardisty, Alta., to Steel City, Neb.

Two other export pipelines, the expansion of the TransMountain pipeline sold to the federal government and Enbridge Inc.’s Line 3 pipeline replacement, also face uncertainty.

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.</s>GREAT FALLS, Mont. — A federal judge in Montana has blocked construction of the $8 billion Keystone XL Pipeline to allow more time to study the project's potential environmental impact.

The Great Falls Tribune reports U.S. District Judge Brian Morris' order on Thursday came as Calgary-based TransCanada was preparing to build the first stages of the oil pipeline in northern Montana. Environmental groups had sued TransCanada and the U.S. Department of State in federal court in Great Falls.

Morris says the government's analysis didn't fully study the cumulative effects of greenhouse gas emissions, the effects of current oil prices on the pipeline's viability or include updated modeling of potential oil spills.

The 1,184-mile pipeline would transport up to 830,000 barrels of crude a day from the Canadian province of Alberta and Montana to facilities in Nebraska.</s>A federal judge in Montana on Thursday blocked construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to allow the State Department to provide a fuller explanation of how the 1,184-mile project would affect the environment.

The judge, Brian M. Morris of the District of Montana, criticized the Trump administration for its failure to provide a “reasoned explanation” for its position about the pipeline’s impact on the climate. Construction could have begun as early as next year.

“The Department instead simply discarded prior factual findings related to climate change to support its course reversal,” Judge Morris wrote in his decision.

Environmental and Native American groups that have fought the pipeline called Judge Morris’s ruling a major victory and a setback for the Trump administration’s environmental and energy policies.</s>GREAT FALLS, Mont. — A federal judge in Montana has blocked construction of the $8-billion Keystone XL pipeline to allow more time to study the project’s potential environmental impact. The Great Falls Tribune reports U.S. District Judge Brian Morris’ order on Thursday came as Calgary-based TransCanada was preparing to build the first stages of the oil pipeline in northern Montana. Environmental groups had sued TransCanada and the U.S. Department of State in federal court in Great Falls. The 1,897-kilometre pipeline would transport up to 830,000 barrels of crude a day from Alberta and Montana to facilities in Nebraska. More to come.</s>TransCanada’s $10-billion Keystone XL pipeline project has suffered another setback after a U.S. federal judge blocked its construction to allow more time to study the potential environmental impact.

The Great Falls Tribune reports U.S. District Judge Brian Morris’ order on Thursday came as the Calgary-based energy giant was preparing to build the first stages of the oil pipeline in northern Montana.

Indigenous and environmental groups had sued TransCanada and the U.S. Department of State after Nebraska authorities approved an alternative route to the one TransCanada had proposed through the state.

The groups argued the U.S. State Department violated several acts in issuing a presidential permit for the pipeline without a proper environmental assessment of the changed route.

Morris said in his decision Thursday the government’s analysis didn’t fully study the cumulative effects of greenhouse gas emissions, the effects of current oil prices on the pipeline’s viability or include updated modelling of potential oil spills.

The proposed 1,897-kilometre pipeline would carry crude from Hardisty, Alta., to Steel City, Neb.

Two other export pipelines, the expansion of the TransMountain pipeline sold to the federal government and Enbridge Inc.’s Line 3 pipeline replacement, also face uncertainty.</s>U.S. District Judge Brian Morris issued an order Thursday blocking construction of the $8 billion Keystone XL Pipeline until further environmental analysis is conducted.

The decision comes as TransCanada is preparing to build the oil pipeline beginning in northern Montana, with pipe being shipped to the state by train and trucked to locations along the line.

Environmental groups that sued TransCanada and the U.S. Department of State in federal court in Great Falls called the decision to overturn the Trump administration-issued permit a landmark ruling.

More: Army of attorneys spar over Keystone pipeline in Great Falls court

In his decision, Morris said the government's analysis fell short on:

» The effects of the current oil prices on the viability of the pipeline.

» And updated modeling of potential oil spills and recommended mitigation measures.

"The Department must supplement new and relevant information regarding the risk of spills," Morris wrote.

As for climate change, Morris noted that the department denied the permit in 2015 and relied heavily on the United State's role in climate leadership. That was under the Obama Administration.

Then, under the Trump administration, the department approved the permit, dismissing concerns about climate change.

The Trump Administration decision approving the project noted that “there have been numerous developments related to global action to address climate change, including announcements by many countries of their plans to do so” since the 2015 decision.

Morris said that statement fell short of a factually based determination, let alone a reasoned explanation, for the course reversal.

“An agency cannot simply disregard contrary or inconvenient factual determinations that it made in the past, any more than it can ignore inconvenient facts when it writes on a blank slate," Morris wrote.

The reversal required a "reasoned explanation" but instead the State Department discarded prior factual findings related to climate change, the judge said.

Keystone XL Pipeline would transport up to 830,000 barrels per day of crude oil from Alberta, Canada and the Bakken Shale Formation in Montana to existing pipeline facilities near Steele City, Neb., from which the oil would be delivered to Cushing, Okla., and the Gulf Coast.

The U.S. portion of the line would run 875 miles through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. The rest of the 1,200-mile line is in Canada.

About 250 miles of the pipeline would be buried across six counties in Montana beginning on the border with Canada in Phillips County. TransCanada already as begun delivering pipe to Montana in expectation of construction beginning in 2019.

The Indigenous Environmental Network, North Coast Rivers Alliance, Northern Plains Resource Council and other groups sued TransCanada and the U.S. State Department in March to block the decision to issue a presidential permit allowing construction.

"I would call it a landmark ruling because it overturns a presidential decision purporting to find that a transboundary project is in the public interest," Stephan Volker, a Berkeley-based attorney for the plaintiffs, told the Tribune. "And Judge Morris correctly ruled it was not in the public interest because Secretary Kerry had found in a detailed ruling several years ago it was not in the public interest."

John Kerry was secretary of state when the Obama administration denied the presidential permit for the pipeline.

A presidential permit is required when a project crosses an international boundary. The secretary of state makes a recommendation, then the president decides.

"We have never had a ruling against a president overturning a substantive finding a project is in the public interest," Volker said. "That finding is required for transboundary projects. So it's unique to this kind of national project that affects multiple countries."

Dena Hoff, a Glendive farmer and member-leader of the Northern Plains Resource Council, called the ruling a victory for rule of law and common sense stewardship of land and water.

"All Americans should be proud that our system of checks and balances can still function even in the face of enormous strains," Hoff said.

The Fort Peck tribes of Montana have opposed the current location of the pipeline crossing on the Missouri River in Valley County, Montana because they say if there was an oil spill it could taint their downstream water system.

The pipeline would cross the Milk River 1.6 miles west of Nashua, and the Missouri River just west of the mouth of the Milk. That location is 57 miles upstream from the intake of the Assiniboine and Sioux Rural Water Supply System.

TransCanada says the pipeline will be safe. At the Missouri River, the pipeline depth would be 54 feet below the lowest surveyed river elevation, and heavier-walled pipe with anti-corrosion coating would be used.

"Pipelines are the safest and most cost-effective form of overland crude oil transportation," according the environmental impact statement that was completed on the project.

The Obama Administration, citing climate change, had denied the permit, saying it wasn't in the national interest.

In approving the pipeline, the Trump Administration said the project would support U.S. priorities relating to energy security, economic development and infrastructure.

The environmental groups argued it would push the earth beyond its carrying capacity for carbon dioxide, and asked how that could be in the public's interest.

In the same case, Morris directed the government in August to supplement the 2014 final supplemental environmental impact statement to consider another alternative route through Nebraska.

More: Great Falls judge orders new federal review of Keystone XL pipeline

But the court had yet to decide on vacating the presidential permit granting permission to cross the international border between Canada and the United States at Montana.

Morris’s 54-page order overturns the Trump Administration’s approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline and issues an injunction preventing construction of the project until additional analysis occurs.</s>The future of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline has been thrown into doubt after a federal judge in Montana blocked its construction, saying the Trump administration approved it after an incomplete analysis.

U.S. District Judge Brian Morris on Thursday ruled that the U.S. State Department didn’t look closely enough at factors such as the project’s viability in the face of lower oil prices, new modelling of possible oil spills and ways to mitigate them, or at the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions, The Great Falls Tribune reported.

Coverage of the Keystone XL pipeline on Globalnews.ca:

“The major spills that occurred between 2014 and 2017 qualify as significant,” Morris said in his decision, as quoted by The Hill.

“The department would have evaluated the spills in the 2014 [environmental review] had the information been available.”

Morris went on to say that the State Department didn’t adequately justify approving the pipeline in 2017 after it was rejected under Barack Obama in 2015, The Hill reported.

With Trump in power, the U.S. government essentially flouted concerns about climate change, he argued.

“The department’s 2017 conclusory analysis that climate-related impacts from Keystone subsequently would prove inconsequential and its corresponding reliance on this conclusion as a centerpiece of its policy changed required the department to provide a ‘reasoned explanation,” Morris said.

In a statement, environmental group, the Sierra Club, said the Trump administration “violated bedrock U.S. environmental laws when approving a federal permit” for the pipeline.

“The Trump administration tried to force this dirty pipeline project on the American people, but they can’t ignore the threats it would pose to our clean water, our climate and our communities,” Sierra Club lawyer Doug Hayes said in the statement.

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would span 1,897 kilometres, carrying crude product from Hardisty, Alta. to Steel City, Neb.

This decision doesn’t represent the first legal setback for the pipeline.

In August, Morris ordered an environmental assessment for an alternate pipeline route that Nebraska had approved after TransCanada had proposed a different one through that state.

At that time, he hadn’t revoked the presidential permit for the pipeline.

READ MORE: Donald Trump gives the green light to ‘incredible’ Keystone XL pipeline

U.S. President Donald Trump made the approval of Keystone XL a key plank in his election campaign, eventually approving it in March 2017.

Investors, however, were skeptical at the time as they expected further hurdles to its realization.

TransCanada hasn’t yet made a final investment decision on the project.

The judge’s decision is embedded below:
• With files from The Associated Press</s>A federal judge temporarily blocked construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, ruling late Thursday that the Trump administration had failed to justify its decision granting a permit for the 1,200-mile long project designed to connect Canada’s tar sands crude with refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast.

It was a major defeat for President Donald Trump, who attacked the Obama administration for failing to move ahead in the face of protests based largely on environmental concerns. Trump signed an executive order two days into his presidency setting in motion a course reversal on the Keystone XL pipeline and the Dakota Access pipeline.

The decision, issued by Judge Brian Morris of the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana, does not permanently block a permit but requires the administration to conduct a more complete review of potential adverse impacts related to climate change, cultural resources and endangered species. It basically ordered a do-over.

Morris hit the administration with a familiar charge, that it disregarded facts, facts established by experts during the Obama administration about "climate-related impacts" from Keystone XL. The Trump administration claimed, with no supporting information, that those impacts "would prove inconsequential." The State Department "simply discarded prior factual findings related to climate change to support its course reversal."

It also used "outdated information" about the impact of potential oil spills on endangered species, he said, rather than "'the best scientific and commercial data available.'"

"Today's ruling makes it clear once and for all that it's time for TransCanada to give up on their Keystone XL pipe dream," said Sierra Club Senior Attorney Doug Hayes in a statement. The lawsuit prompting Thursday's order was brought by a collection of opponents, including the indigenous Environmental Network and the Northern Plains Resource Council, a conservation coalition based in Montana.

"The Trump administration tried to force this dirty pipeline project on the American people, but they can't ignore the threats it would pose to our clean water, our climate, and our communities," Hayes said.

Hayes told The Washington Post that the company had already been moving equipment into place and started pre-construction in Montana and South Dakota with the intent of beginning construction in early 2019.

"It's clear that this decision tonight will delay the pipeline significantly," said Hayes, who noted that a proper environmental impact statement of this scope usually takes about a year to complete. "TransCanada does not have an approved pipeline at this point."

Morris, a former clerk to the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama. His decision was one of scores of court rebukes to the Trump administration for decisions on the environment, immigration and transgender service in the military, among other issues, made hastily and, in the opinions of dozens of judges, without the "reasoned consideration" required by various federal laws, particularly the Administrative Procedure Act. Also on Thursday, a federal appeals court ruled that President Trump cannot immediately end the program, DACA, that shields from deportation young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children.

The administration is appealing many of the rulings and may appeal Thursday's decision as well. No immediate comment came from the administration after the pipeline order. TransCanada, the Calgary-based group behind the project, did not respond to request for comment early Friday morning.

The Keystone XL pipeline permit decision was largely in the hands of the State Department, by virtue of its authority to issue "presidential permits" for cross-border infrastructure projects.

The massive project remains one of the most controversial infrastructure proposals in modern American history.

It's intended to be an extension of TransCanada's existing Keystone Pipeline, which was completed in 2013. Keystone XL would transport up to 830,000 barrels of crude oil per day from Alberta, Canada and Montana to Oklahoma and the Gulf Coast. In the U.S., the pipeline would stretch 875 miles through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, with the rest continuing into Canada.

It met sustained opposition from environmental advocacy groups, as well as from Obama, who worried about the contribution it would make toward climate change.

As The Post's Steven Mufson reported, activists say the pipeline would be especially damaging to the climate because it would mean extracting thick, low-quality oil from Canada's oil sands, with lots of tree-cutting and energy consumption in the process which would increase greenhouse gas-emissions. Native American groups in Montana and elsewhere fought the Keystone project as well, saying its route failed to adhere to historical treaty boundaries and would impinge on their water systems and sacred lands.

In 2015, on the eve of the international climate talks in Paris, the Obama administration appeared to bring an end to the seven-year-long saga when it announced it was halting construction of the pipeline, arguing that approval would compromise the country's effort to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. The U.S.. Obama said, was now a "global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change."

"And frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership," he said, adding that the "biggest risk" the U.S. faced was "not acting."

The decision to deny the pipeline permit came after the completion of a long-awaited final environmental impact statement -- 11 volumes of analysis released in 2014.

It was this 2014 assessment that the State Department, under the direction of Trump's January 2017 presidential memorandum, used to make their decision to approve the pipeline, The Post reported. According to the department, "there are no substantial changes or significant new information which would affect the continued reliability" of the report.

Morris said, however, that there have indeed been changes since the 2014 assessment and that the Trump administration failed to consider them. He included pipeline leaks, the expansion of another pipeline called the Alberta Clipper and shifts in oil markets. Those could alter the overall impact of Keystone XL and should have been considered by the government.

The State Department, in issuing the permit, failed to “analyze the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions” of the Keystone project and the expanded Alberta Clipper pipeline. It "ignored its duty to take a ‘hard look’ at these two connected actions.
• The department “acted on incomplete information regarding” the potential damage to cultural resources in Indian territory along the route. “The Department appears to have jumped the gun.”
• The department failed to make a fact-based explanation for its course reversal, “let alone a reasoned explanation....'An agency cannot simply disregard contrary or inconvenient factual determinations that it made in the past, any more than it can ignore inconvenient facts'” in the present," he wrote, quoting judicial precedents.
• The department’s analysis that “climate-related impacts” from Keystone “would prove inconsequential” needed a “reasoned explanation.” It did not provide one.

Jackie Prange, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the ruling a "huge win" not just for the environmental activists and tribal groups who have been fighting the pipeline, but for "anyone who cares about the rule of law and holding this administration to the facts."

“It’s emblematic of what we’re seeing with the Trump administration, which is a very fast and sloppy reversal of prior decisions . . . in a way that doesn’t adhere to the rule of law,” Prange told The Post. “That’s why we keep winning in the court.”
A federal judge in Montana orders a suspension of construction on the Keystone XL pipeline, citing an inadequate review of the potential environmental impact of the pipeline.