Trump accelerates controversial Keystone and Dakota pipelines

Trump accelerates controversial Keystone and Dakota pipelines
Not one to shy away from a challenge, US President Donald Trump has signed executive orders to accelerate two controversial pipeline projects.

He also decreed that lines built in the US must be made of American steel.

There have been numerous objections to the Dakota and Keystone XL pipelines.

The latter was rejected by former President Barack Obama’s administration in 2015 amid environmental concerns. He said the project would not have lowered petrol prices, created long-term jobs or affected energy dependence.

In December, 2016, the US Army failed to approve the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Supported by Trump, it has been at the centre of months of protests by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in North Dakota.

The Native Americans said a part of the line designed to run under a reservoir on the Missouri River could contaminate drinking water and run over sacred burial sites.

Trump claims the pipelines “will put a lot of steelworkers back to work.”

Greenpeace Executive Director Annie Leonard called the claim “bogus.”

“Instead of pushing bogus claims about the potential of pipelines to create jobs, Trump should focus his efforts on the clean energy sector, where America’s future lives,” she said.

“Renewable energy is not only the future, but also the only just economy for today,” she added.

“Keystone, the Dakota Access Pipeline, and fossil fuel infrastructure projects like them will only make billionaires richer and make the rest of us suffer.

“We will resist this with all our power and we will continue to build the future the world wants to see.”