By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt joined 18 of his colleagues in sending a letter to President Biden asking him to reopen the process on the Keystone XL pipeline in light of the cyberattack that shut down a portion of the Colonial Pipeline earlier this month.
"On his first day in office, President Biden canceled the permit for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline," Schmidt said. "We've sued him over that, because we think that cancellation violated due process. Not only is that a pipeline issue, but who is ever going to make a large investment in any capital project that requires government approval if the government can just turn on a dime and say, I changed my mind, sorry, you've invested billions of dollars, now you're stuck."
Schmidt believes the marketplace will help fix the issues that were caused by the Colonial outage, if it is allowed to work.
"At the end of the day, we don't have sufficient redundancy," Schmidt said. "We don't have sufficient capacity, if a large pipeline goes off line, as the Colonial Pipeline did. The result has been gas lines like we haven't seen since the 1970s on the East Coast and gasoline at $7 a gallon. Markets work, as long as their excesses are properly monitored and controlled. Markets work. We have to trust them and allow that to happen."
Schmidt and 20 other attorneys general filed suit in March in Texas against Biden's order. Their argument is the power to regulate international commerce resides with Congress. Congress expressly permitted the project in the 2011 Temporary Payroll Tax Cut Continuation Act.