President Donald Trump has granted a key approval to a major new pipeline that would move oil from Canada into the central U.S.
The three-foot-wide Bridger Pipeline Expansion would carry up to 550,000 barrels of oil a day from the Canadian border with Montana down through eastern Montana and Wyoming, where it would link up with another pipeline.
More state and federal approvals are needed before Casper, Wyoming-based Bridger Pipeline begins construction. Company officials expect to start next year.
At peak volume, the 650-mile pipeline would move two-thirds as much oil as the better-known Keystone XL pipeline that got partially built before President Joe Biden, citing climate change, canceled its permit on the day he took office in 2021.
FEMA bringing back to employees
An attorney representing the Trump administration informed a U.S. District Court that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has begun offering new appointments to disaster workers whose contracts the agency did not renew in January, reversing a controversial decision that prompted a coalition of labor unions, scientific groups and local governments to sue the administration.
FEMA has “initiated contact to offer new appointments” to term-limited staff whose contracts expired the first three weeks of January, U.S. Attorney Craig H. Missakian wrote in a notice submitted to the U.S. District Court in San Francisco Friday.
The notice comes after months of uncertainty over the future of FEMA’s term-limited disaster workers, who make up roughly half the agency’s workforce.
FEMA did not immediately respond to questions about the court notice or how many employees received offers to return.