Alberta
A Trump Effort To Revive Keystone XL Would Likely Be Purely Symbolic
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
Of all the destructive actions President Joe Biden took related to energy policy during his four years in office, his stroke-of-a-pen decision on his first day in office to cancel the cross-border permit for the Keystone XL pipeline system as a political payoff to his environmentalist campaign funders was perhaps the worst.
It was bad enough that Biden took that action to cancel the $8 billion project absent any finding that operator Trans-Canada (now TC Energy) was in violation of any law or regulation of the United States. It was even worse that he took that action despite the fact that Trans-Canada had already spent over $3 billion building much of the project with hundreds of miles of pipe already in the ground by January 2021.
Worse still are the realities that, along with cancelling the project, Biden canceled as many as 10,000 high-paying American jobs during the construction of the project, left America more dependent on oil imports from hostile nations like Venezuela and Iran due to lost imports from Canada and even cost the province of Alberta an estimated $1.3 billion it stood to gain from the project’s completion.
But the most damaging impact of all emanating from Biden’s craven act of crony politics was the loss of trust in the consistent, fair application of American law and regulations it caused. The cancellation of Keystone XL made it vastly harder for big companies to secure financing for big projects that take years to permit and develop because funders could no longer assume U.S. laws would be applied based on merit rather than political fiat. That advantage over other parts of the world that the United States has always enjoyed was severely damaged.
Last week, we saw a flurry of stories by major media outlets that the Trump transition team is working on plans to reverse Biden’s ill-considered order and trying to revive the Keystone XL project. While that is certainly a laudable goal, developments that have taken place since 2021 will likely limit it to a purely symbolic act.
First, TC Energy no longer even owns the rights to the project or its remaining assets. Those assets, along with the rest of the previously existing Keystone Pipeline system, were spun off into a new entity named South Bow Energy in June of this year. A spokesperson for that company was reluctant to comment when asked about possible revival of Keystone XL, saying, “As a new company, our focus and priority at this point is to continue to deliver energy safely and efficiently. Part of South Bow’s long-term strategy is to grow our business.”
Second, a few months after Biden’s destructive action, TC Energy announced it had cancelled the project and would not be seeking to carry on the fight. As a result of the cancellation, TC Energy then removed the hundreds of miles of pipe that had already been installed into the ground so that it could be repurposed for use in other projects.
Third, the rights-of-way for the Keystone XL project are no longer in effect. Nor are the permits for the project. Thus, any effort to revive it by South Bow would necessitate a repetition of the painstaking, years-long process of reacquiring all those miles of rights-of-way and local, state and federal permits.
This brings us back to the most damaging aspect of Biden’s political payback: Any such effort would without doubt extend into the next presidential term to begin in 2029. Who is going to be willing to commit billions of now-inflated dollars (thanks largely to Biden and his team’s policies) to a pipeline project that might well end up being cancelled should voters decide to elect another Democrat to the presidency in 2028?
So, while the desire by the Trump team to restart Keystone XL is commendable, the facts on the ground almost certainly mean it would be a purely symbolic gesture.
This current presidency cannot end soon enough.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
From the Canadian Energy Centre
‘We are excited to bring this made-in-Canada innovation to the world’
To the naked eye, it looks about as exciting as baking soda or table salt.
But to the scientists in the University of Calgary chemistry lab who have spent more than a decade working on it, this white powder is nothing short of amazing.
That’s because the material they invented is garnering global attention as a new solution to help address climate change.
Known as Calgary Framework-20 (CALF-20 for short), it has “an exceptional capacity to absorb carbon dioxide” and was recognized in connection with the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
A jar of CALF-20, a metal-organic framework (MOF) used in carbon capture. Photo courtesy UCalgary
“It’s basically a molecular sponge that can adsorb CO2 very efficiently,” said Dr. George Shimizu, a UCalgary chemistry professor who leads the research group that first developed CALF-20 in 2013.
The team has been refining its effectiveness ever since.
“CALF-20 is a very exciting compound to work on because it has been a great example of translating basic science into something that works to solve a problem in the real world,” Shimizu said.
Advancing CCS
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is not a new science in Alberta. Since 2015, operating projects in the province have removed 15 million tonnes of CO2 that would have otherwise been emitted to the atmosphere.
Alberta has nearly 60 proposed facilities for new CCS networks including the Pathways oil sands project, according to the Regina-based International CCS Knowledge Centre.
This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to three of Shimizu’s colleagues in Japan, Australia and the United States, for developing the earliest versions of materials like CALF-20 between 1989 and 2003.
Custom-built molecules
CALF-20 is in a class called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) — custom-built molecules that are particularly good at capturing and storing specific substances.
MOFs are leading to new technologies for harvesting water from air in the desert, storing toxic gases, and capturing CO2 from industrial exhaust or directly from the atmosphere.
CALF-20 is one of the few MOF compounds that has advanced to commercial use.
“There has been so much discussion about all the possible uses of MOFs, but there has been a lot of hype versus reality, and CALF-20 is the first to be proven stable and effective enough to be used at an industrial scale,” Shimizu said.
It has been licensed to companies capturing carbon across a range of industries, with the raw material now being produced by the tonne by chemical giant BASF.
CO2 pipeline at the Quest CCS project near Edmonton, Alta. Photo courtesy Shell Canada
Carbon capture filter gigafactory
Svante Inc. has demonstrated its CALF-20-based carbon capture system at a cement plant in British Columbia.
The company recently opened a “gigafactory” in Burnaby equipped to manufacture enough carbon capture and removal filters for up to 10 million tonnes of CO2 annually, equivalent to the emissions of more than 2.3 million cars.
The filters are designed to trap CO2 directly from industrial emissions and the atmosphere, the company says.
Svante chief operating officer Richard Laliberté called the Nobel committee’s recognition “a profound validation” for the entire field of carbon capture and removal.
CALF-20 expansion
Meanwhile, one of Shimizu’s former PhD students helped launch a spinoff company, Existent Sorbents, to further expand the applications of CALF-20.
Existent is working with oil sands producers, a major steel factory and a U.S.-based firm capturing emissions from other point sources, said CEO Adrien Côté.
“The first users of CALF-20 are leaders who took the risk of introducing new technology to industries that are shrewd about their top and bottom lines,” Côté said.
“It has been a long journey, but we are at the point where CALF-20 has proven to be resilient and able to survive in harsh real-world conditions, and we are excited to bring this made-in-Canada innovation to the world.”
From LifeSiteNews
Thousands of Albertans marched upon the province’s capital of Edmonton this past Saturday in the “I Am Alberta Rally,” calling for the province to immediately secede from Canada in light of increasing frustration with the Liberal federal government.
The rally saw an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people march on the steps of the Alberta legislative building, demanding that a referendum be held at once to allow Alberta to leave Canada.
“We can’t delay. We can’t slow down,” well-known freedom lawyer Keith Wilson said at the rally as he spoke to the crowd.
“This is our moment. This is our future. For our families, for our children, for Alberta. Alberta will be free.”
The group behind the rally, the Alberta Prosperity Project (APP), bills itself as a sovereignty advocacy group. As reported by LifeSiteNews earlier this year, the APP wants to put Alberta independence to a question to the people via a referendum.
The rally also comes after certain members affiliated with the APP such as Jeffrey Rath and Dr. Dennis Modry earlier the month met in Washington, D.C. with cabinet-level U.S. politicians to discuss Alberta’s potential independence from Canada.
U.S. President Donald Trump has routinely suggested that Canada become an American state in recent months, often making such statements while talking about or implementing trade tariffs on Canadian goods.
The APP on July 4 applied for a citizen-led petition presented to Elections Alberta that asks, “Do you agree that the Province of Alberta shall become a sovereign country and cease to be a province in Canada?”
The group is hoping to have the referendum on the ballot as early as next year and has accused the Liberal federal government of encroaching on Alberta’s ability to manage its own affairs.”
The group says an independent Alberta would allow it to “keep our resources, grow our economy, and reinvest in Alberta families, businesses and infrastructure.”
As it stands now, the referendum question has been referred to the courts to see whether or not it can proceed.
Alberta Conservative Premier Danielle Smith does not support a fully independent Alberta. However, she does advocate for the province to have more autonomy from Ottawa.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, Smith said her conservative government will allow but not support a citizen-led referendum on independence.
Despite not advocating for an outright separate Alberta, Smith’s government has not stood still when it comes to increasing provincial autonomy.
Smith’s United Conservative government earlier this year passed Bill 54, which sets the groundwork for possible independence referendums by making such votes easier to trigger. The bill lowers the signature threshold from 600,000 to 177,000.
As reported by LifeSiteNews last week, Smith’s government introduced a new law to protect “constitutional rights” that would allow it to essentially ignore International Agreements, including those by the World Health Organization (WHO), signed by the federal Liberal government.
The calls for independence have grown since Liberal leader Mark Carney defeated Conservative rival Pierre Poilievre.
Carney, like former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau before him, said he is opposed to new pipeline projects that would allow Alberta oil and gas to be unleashed. Also, his green agenda, like Trudeau’s, is at odds with Alberta’s main economic driver, its oil and gas industry.
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