President-elect Donald Trump aims to unleash U.S. energy production to help drive down the cost of oil and gas, and by extension everything else, and bolster the U.S. economy and American prosperity.

Part of that plan reportedly includes reauthorizing construction permits for the defunct Keystone XL pipeline, which were revoked by President Joe Biden upon taking office in 2021, according to Breitbart.

That move may prove to be more symbolic than practical and too late to have a direct impact, however, as the circumstances of the perpetually doomed decade-old project are now far different than in 2017 when Trump first reversed former President Barack Obama's 2015 rejection of the oil transportation infrastructure.

Trump plans to reauthorize the Keystone XL pipeline

According to Politico, citing sources close to the Trump transition team, President-elect Trump plans to try to revive via an executive order the roughly 1,200-mile pipeline project that, if completed, would help transport massive amounts of rich Canadian crude oil to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast.

"It’s on the list of things they want to do first day," one unnamed source said.

The pipeline, first proposed during the Obama administration but rejected over environmental concerns, was green-lit by Trump in his first term and construction got underway to link Western Canada's oil-rich fields with an existing pipeline network in Nebraska that was connected to the Gulf Coast refineries.

However, when President Biden entered office, he immediately bowed to climate change activists and revoked the necessary permits for the Keystone XL project, which brought the operation to a swift halt and resulted in the project being shut down completely because of the continued uncertainty brought about by political changes.

Now, despite Trump's intentions, it may be too late to revitalize the project, as the Canadian company that was building it, TC Energy, sold what remained to another company, dug up most of the pipeline that had already been laid during the Trump years, and focused instead on building a separate pipeline to Canada's West Coast.

Circumstances have changed

As noted, President-elect Trump's plan to reauthorize the Keystone XL pipeline may be more symbolic than practical, but it would certainly help sell the "pro-oil" message his administration will likely adopt.

One anonymous source told Politico, "Everyone in the country knows what the KXL pipeline is. It’s energy. It’s infrastructure. It’s construction."

Unfortunately, if any company is even interested in pursuing the possibly resurrected pipeline project, they would essentially have to start from scratch in terms of reacquiring the necessary local construction permits, land from private owners for easements, and potentially even have to renew the prior environmental impact studies that initially caused so many delays under the Obama administration.

American public overwhelmingly supported the planned pipeline

If that were to happen, though, President-elect Trump would likely enjoy the support of a sizeable majority of the American people, if the results of a 2022 poll about the Keystone XL pipeline remain true roughly three years later.

According to Canadian media outlet The Province, around 71% of Americans either "very much" or "somewhat" favored a restart of the pipeline project about one year after President Biden shut it down with the revocation of the required presidential approval for cross-border construction.

Assuming that support remains generally unchanged, and that willing investors can be found to fund the reauthorized project, the Keystone XL pipeline could conceivably result in thousands of new jobs for American citizens, increased domestic energy production and exports to foreign buyers, lower costs for energy and goods, and help economically undermine adversaries who rely heavily upon high prices for energy, such as Russia.