TransCanada Confirms to Use 75% of North American Steel for Keystone Pipeline

The TransCanada Corporation will use 75 percent of North American steel for implementation of the Keystone XL pipeline.

HOUSTON (Sputnik) — The TransCanada Corporation, which is in charge of construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, will use 75 percent of North American steel for implementation of the project, TransCanada Chief Operating Officer Alexander Pourbaix told Sputnik Tuesday.

"Seventy-five percent of the steel is coming from North American sources," Pourbaix said on the sidelines of the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston when asked to comment on the recent presidential order.

In January, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring use of American steel for pipelines built in the United States.

Earlier in March, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said that the Keystone XL pipeline was not being built with US steel, as Trump's executive order requiring companies to do so did not not apply to projects already underway.

The 1,179-mile Keystone XL, which was blocked by former President Barack Obama and then approved by Trump, would would link the oil sands region in the Canadian province of Alberta to the US state of Nebraska, and all the way down to the oil refineries on the Gulf of Mexico coast.