The Keystone Pipeline System is an oil pipeline system in Canada and the United States, commissioned in 2010 and now owned solely by TransCanada Corporation. It runs from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin in Alberta to refineries in Illinois and Texas, and also to oil tank farms and an oil pipeline distribution center in Cushing, Oklahoma. The pipeline became well-known when a planned fourth phase, Keystone XL, attracted opposition from environmentalists, becoming a symbol of the battle over climate change and fossil fuels. In 2015 Keystone XL was temporarily delayed by then–President Barack Obama. On January 24, 2017, President Donald Trump took action intended to permit the pipeline's completion. Three phases of the project are in operation: The Keystone Pipeline completed in June 2010 delivers oil from Hardisty, Alberta, over 3,456 kilometres to the junction at Steele City, Nebraska, and on to Wood River Refinery in Roxana, Illinois, and Patoka Oil Terminal Hub north of Patoka, Illinois. The Keystone-Cushing extension completed in February 2011 running 468 kilometres from Steele City to a tank farm in Cushing, Oklahoma. The Gulf Coast Extension completed in January 2014 runs 784 kilometres from Cushing to refineries at Port Arthur, Texas. A lateral pipeline to refineries at Houston, Texas and a terminal will be completed mid-2016, going online the following year.The first two phases have the capacity to deliver up to 590,000 barrels per day of oil into the Midwest refineries. Phase III has capacity to deliver up to 700,000 barrels per day to the Texas refineries. By comparison, production of petroleum in the United States averaged 9,400,000 barrels per day in first-half 2015, with gross exports of 500,000 barrels per day through July 2015.The proposed Keystone XL Pipeline would connect the Phase I-pipeline terminals in Hardisty, Alberta, and Steele City, Nebraska by a shorter route and a larger-diameter pipe. It would run through Baker, Montana, where American-produced light crude oil from the Williston Basin of Montana and North Dakota would be added to the Keystone's throughput of synthetic crude oil and diluted bitumen from the oil sands of Canada. In November 2017, 210,000 gallons of oil leaked from the pipeline in South Dakota.
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