US President Donald Trump inks order to revive oil pipelines

President Trump signed five more executive actions on Tuesday in a blitz of executive power meant to speed approvals of high-profile energy projects like the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.

In reversing the Obama administration policy to disapprove the Keystone pipeline, Mr Trump emphasised that the construction isn’t a done deal. “It’s something that subject to a renegotiation of terms by us,” he said. “We’ll see if we can get the pipeline built. A lot of jobs, 28,000 jobs.”

Keystone XL is a proposed 1,179-mile cross-border pipeline from Alberta to Nebraska that became a lightning rod for Mr Obama’s energy policy, with the administration taking seven years to make a decision before killing it over environmental concerns.

The President also signed a similar order on the Dakota Access Pipeline, a 1,172-mile pipeline from North Dakota to Illinois that has been the subject of heated protests. Mr Trump once owned stock in Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the pipeline, although his campaign said he sold off all individual stock holdings last August. Mr Trump has not yet filed a financial disclosure report to confirm the sale.

Then he signed a separate action requiring that the steel used in the pipelines be made in the United States. “Going to put a lot of workers, a lot of steelworkers, back to work," he said. But potentially more sweeping are two directives changing the process of approving and regulating future pipeline and infrastructure projects.