When Joe Biden scrapped a permit for the huge Keystone XL pipeline just hours after entering the White House last year, a death knell seemed to be ringing for Canada’s oil sands, by far the largest supplier of foreign oil to the US.
The project, which would have carried Alberta’s heavy, bituminous crude oil to Gulf Coast refineries in Texas, had been opposed for years by environmentalists, owing to the oil sands’ associated ecological impact and high emissions (greater than those of many European countries).
