Originally published June 5, 2013. Updated August 18, 2026.
TC Energy killed the Keystone XL pipeline on June 9, 2021, ending a line built to carry 830,000 barrels of oil sands crude a day to the Gulf Coast. Oil sands production kept climbing anyway. Alberta pumped 2.99 million barrels of raw bitumen a day in 2020, which is 80 percent of Canada’s total crude output, and a different pipeline, Trans Mountain, nearly tripled export capacity out of Alberta when it opened in May 2024. If you’re wondering whether Keystone XL itself is coming back, a similarly shaped project ran through its own shipper open season earlier in 2026, this time under a different company’s name.
The rise and fall of Keystone XL
TransCanada, now TC Energy, first proposed Keystone XL in June 2008. By its 2012 route revision, the line was designed to carry 830,000 barrels of oil sands crude a day, each barrel a standard 42 US gallons, from Alberta to Gulf Coast refineries. It took seven years of review before the Obama administration rejected the cross-border permit on November 6, 2015, concluding the project wouldn’t serve the national interest.
Trump signed a memo reviving the project four days into his first term, on January 24, 2017, and his State Department issued the cross-border permit that March. Biden revoked the permit on his first day back in office, January 20, 2021, and less than five months later, TC Energy said on June 9, 2021 that it was done and formally cancelled the project.
Is Keystone XL coming back
South Bow now runs what’s left of the old Keystone system. It’s the company TC Energy spun its liquids-pipeline business off into on October 1, 2024, and it owns the built Keystone Pipeline System, which can move 590,000 barrels a day through its original phases and another 700,000 through the newer Cushing-to-Texas leg. Combined, that’s already more than the 830,000 barrels a day Keystone XL was designed to add on its own.
What’s proposed now is a South Bow project called the Prairie Connector, a new line from Hardisty, Alberta to Cushing, Oklahoma and on to the Gulf Coast. South Bow ran an open season for the line that closed March 30, 2026, offering shippers about 450,000 barrels a day of new capacity, a volume analysts told OilPrice.com could raise Canada’s crude exports by roughly 12 percent. A separate US project, the Bridger Pipeline Expansion, would run from Montana to Wyoming to connect on the American side, according to OilPrice.com.
Put the pipelines that matter to this story side by side.
| Pipeline | Capacity (barrels a day) | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Keystone XL (proposed) | 830,000 | Cancelled 2021 |
| Keystone Pipeline System (existing) | 590,000 plus 700,000 on a second leg | Operating, owned by South Bow |
| Trans Mountain Expansion | 890,000, up from 300,000 | Operating since May 2024 |
| Prairie Connector (proposed) | About 450,000 | Open season closed March 2026 |
Source: Wikipedia, “Keystone Pipeline”, Trans Mountain Corporation and OilPrice.com.
How big are Canada’s oil sands now
Alberta’s oil sands produced 2.99 million barrels of raw bitumen a day in 2020, the most recent figure Canada’s energy regulator has confirmed on its own site, which has promised a “Summer 2024” update it still hasn’t posted. That province alone accounts for 80 percent of Canada’s crude oil production, and oil sands make up more than three-quarters of Alberta’s own 3.79 million barrels a day of total crude output.
None of that slowed down while Keystone XL sat in permitting fights. Bitumen and synthetic crude production from the oil sands grew 240 percent between 2005 and 2022. The industry now accounts for roughly 8 percent of Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
Alberta’s 2020 output on its own works out to roughly three and a half times what Keystone XL was ever built to carry. The Trans Mountain expansion is the pipeline that ended up moving that scale of production.
The Trans Mountain expansion changed the math
Trans Mountain turned out to be the pipeline that gave oil sands crude more room to move. The expanded line began commercial service on May 1, 2024, taking capacity out of Alberta from about 300,000 to 890,000 barrels a day. That gave producers a route to the coast that Keystone XL, designed only to reach Gulf Coast refineries, never offered.
The project also cost far more than planned. Trans Mountain priced the expansion at C$6.8 billion back in 2013. By the time it opened in 2024, the final cost had reached C$34 billion, or about US$24 billion at today’s exchange rate of roughly 1.41 Canadian dollars per US dollar, roughly five times the 2013 estimate. Those two numbers span more than a decade, and neither one is adjusted for inflation.
Was oil sands crude worse for the climate
The pipeline fight centered on whether oil sands crude is dirtier than the barrels it would replace, and whether stopping one pipeline would keep that oil in the ground at all. A 2009 study by IHS CERA estimated oil sands crude runs 5 to 15 percent higher in well-to-wheel emissions than the average barrel it displaces.
Canada’s own emissions inventory shows two numbers moving in opposite directions over the same stretch. Fugitive emissions from the oil and gas sector fell 22 percent, about 22 million tonnes, between 2005 and 2022, even as oil sands output kept climbing. Emissions from stationary combustion in the sector, mostly fuel burned on site, rose 73 percent, about 46 million tonnes, to 109 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2022. For the broader case behind those numbers, our explainer on the evidence for climate change covers the fundamentals.
What would change this answer
The next test is whether South Bow moves the Prairie Connector into formal permitting now that its open season has closed. That pipeline would need its own cross-border permit, since Keystone XL’s original permits lapsed when TC Energy cancelled the project in 2021. The Bridger Pipeline Expansion is moving in parallel on the US side of the border.
Trump has pledged easier permitting for the corridor, and Prime Minister Carney reportedly discussed the pipeline plan with him in October 2025. If regulators on both sides of the border sign off, the corridor Keystone XL once occupied could carry oil sands crude again, under a different company’s name.
The existing Keystone Pipeline System that South Bow already runs keeps moving oil regardless of what happens to Prairie Connector, and so does Trans Mountain on the coast. That stretch of the border has carried no new pipeline since Keystone XL’s 2021 cancellation, and it stays that way unless the new proposals clear permitting on both sides. The Prairie Connector decision only changes how much more capacity gets stacked on top of what’s already flowing through Alberta’s pipelines today.
