Gabby Brown, gabby.brown@sierraclub.org
Washington, DC -- Today, TransCanada, the foreign oil company behind the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, filed a motion urging the federal court in Montana to dismiss a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its approval of the controversial tar sands pipeline. This follows the filing of a similar motion from the administration late last week, which claimed that Trump’s approval of the pipeline is not subject to review by the court.
The lawsuit was filed in March by the Sierra Club, Northern Plains Resource Council, Bold Alliance, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. It challenged the State Department’s inadequate and outdated environmental review of the pipeline, which relied solely on an environmental impact statement from January 2014.
Sierra Club Staff Attorney Doug Hayes issued the following statement in response:
“Once again, the Trump administration acts as if it’s above the law. The approval of Keystone XL was based on an outdated and incomplete analysis, which failed to account for the pipeline’s threats to the climate, water resources, wildlife, and communities. The people whose lives would be disrupted by this dangerous project deserve a full accounting of its impacts, and the law requires it.
“This is nothing more than a ploy by a foreign oil company and an administration beholden to fossil fuel interests to skirt accountability under environmental laws meant to protect the American people.”
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