Judge blocks disputed Keystone XL pipeline in a setback for Trump

"It's feasible, if they do the work and show their work, and they explain, through a serious and factual analysis, why they choose a different outcome, that the courts will maintain it," said M Squillace.

Morris JA concluded that by relaunching Keystone, the Trump administration did not adequately explain how a drop in oil prices could affect the viability of the pipeline. In addition, the government's analysis did not fully examine the potential for the oil spill or the cumulative effects of Keystone's greenhouse gas emissions, in combination with a 2009 approved pipeline, Alberta Clipper.

The decision specifically blames the Trump government for failing to respond to the Obama administration's arguments about climate change, including the need to keep rising global temperatures at safe levels as a basis for denying the pipeline license. Instead, the government said it was considering adopting a policy change aimed at "energy security, economic development and infrastructure."

The judge said that an administration had the right to reconsider a previous policy, but nevertheless had to justify its decision with facts. "Instead, the ministry simply dismissed past factual findings on climate change to support its reversal," the judge wrote.

He cited a US Supreme Court ruling in which it was written: "An agency can not simply ignore the contrary or embarrassing factual findings that it has taken in the past, nor does it". she can not ignore the disturbing facts when she writes on a blank slate. "

Energy and policy analysts say the stubborn battle around Keystone is not commensurate with the project's real importance as an environmental threat or engine of the economy. The pipeline will have relatively little effect, they say, on climate change, oil production in the Canadian oil sands, gasoline prices or the broader labor market at home. United States.

"Keystone is not a very important issue in the context of US energy policy or climate change," said Robert Stavins, head of the Department of Environmental Economics at the University of California. Harvard.