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Keystone Pipeline Construction to Begin in Texas

A Nebraska construction site for the Keystone Pipeline. TransCanada announced it will commence building the southern portion of the pipeline separately.
shannonpatrick17/flickr
A Nebraska construction site for the Keystone Pipeline. TransCanada announced it will commence building the southern portion of the pipeline separately.

Just days after a Texas farmer’s restraining order against Keystone XL pipeline builder TransCanada was lifted, the Alberta company announced it is starting work on a portion of the pipeline stretching from Oklahoma to Texas.

The company announced today it was reapplying for a permit to route the pipeline through Nebraska. Concerns over the route through Nebraska’s environmentally-sensitive Sand Hills region lead in part to rejection of TransCanada’s earlier application.

But TransCanada also announced it would commence building the southernmost portion of the pipeline -- from Cushing, Oklahoma to Texas ports at the Gulf of Mexico -- while it waits on permitting for the northern portion of the line, which requires presidential approval.

In a statement, TransCanada says:

The company also informed the [U.S. State Department] that what had been the Cushing to U.S. Gulf Coast portion of the Keystone XL Project has its own independent value to the marketplace and will be constructed as a stand-alone Gulf Coast Project, not part of the Presidential Permit process. The approximate cost is US$2.3 billion and subject to regulatory approvals, we anticipate the Gulf Coast Project to be in service in mid to late 2013.

KUT News reported this weekend that a temporary restraining order prohibiting TransCanada from exercising imminent domain powers over a Texas farm was dissolved Friday. A lawsuit challenging TransCanada’s request to trench land on farmer Trigg Crawford’s land is now scheduled to start April 30.

Wells has been a part of KUT News since 2012, when he was hired as the station's first online reporter. He's currently the social media host and producer for Texas Standard, KUT's flagship news program. In between those gigs, he served as online editor for KUT, covering news in Austin, Central Texas and beyond.
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