Keystone and Dakota get a US presidential signature

US crude imports have fallen dramatically even though the world’s largest oil consumer still relies heavily on imports.

Oil producers in Canada and North Dakota are expected to benefit from a quicker route for crude oil to US Gulf Coast refiners, Reuters reported. More pipelines from Canada would also generate greater competition for crudes imported from Mexico or Venezuela, analysts say.

Native American tribes and climate activists had successfully blocked the projects earlier. The tribes had hoped for lucrative kickbacks from land deals with oil companies. In a statement on Tuesday, the Standing Rock Sioux said they would fight the orders.

Trump’s decision to revive TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline may herald a new era of pipeline abundance for Canadian oil producers after years of bottlenecks, Bloomberg reported.

His predecessor Barack Obama had rejected it, maintaining that it would contribute to “climate change”.

The three lines would add 1.8 million barrels a day of crude export capacity, enough to handle Western Canada’s growing oil production for 20 years, according to National Energy Board projections, adding more than $4 billion a year to Western Canada’s economy.

Ian Rutherford Plimer an Australian geologist and professor emeritus of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne, has laughed at the idea of activists promoting man-made climate change: “Okay, here’s the bombshell. The recent volcanic eruption in Iceland… since its first spewing of volcanic ash has, in just four days, negated every single effort made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet.”

He added: “I should mention that when the volcano Mt. Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it spewed out more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in all its years on earth.”

Plimer said the whole climate debate was about imposing a carbon tax.