The Keystone XL pipeline would have been in operation long before Ol'' Sniffy got to shut it down were it not for the environmental groups suing to stop it on multiple occasions. The same sort of crap was done at the Dakota Access Pipeline, and when that didn't fly, the ecowhackos joined with a relatively small native contingent who was butthurt because they tried to demand triple what the pipeline company had agreed to pay for a right of way across their reservation at the last moment and the pipeline company did the math and went around the tribal land. That got picked up on and promoted by the Environmental lobby, with full bore distortion of fact, and became a nationally known protest, at least as far as any factual information reached the news outlets on the coasts (which was little, and mostly wildly inaccurate).
Multiple Environmental Impact Studies were done and every time the results came in, another angle was found to sue (what some lawyers do best).
When the protest was finally over, the cost for law enforcement came close to $100,000,000.00, the pipeline had been held up for months, a highway bridge was damaged, damages to livestock and construction equipment in the area topped 1 million dollars (each category), and 720 semi loads of trash and debris were left in a flood zone with spring floods coming, a human body was left in a tributary creek wrapped in a blue tarp, and even a half dozen motherless puppies were abandoned at the site. Ninety five percent of those arrested were from out of state. While that protest was going on, valves on three operating pipelines were tampered with (caught by operators, who shut the lines down), believed to be an attempt to create a disaster to point to while protesting the completion of the DAPL.
The pipeline, completed at Trump's behest, carries roughly a half million barrels of oil per day to market from the Williston Basin (Bakken/Three Forks).
