WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump will approve two controversial oil pipelines by executive order Tuesday, US media reported.
He is expected to okay the Keystone XL pipeline — which would carry crude from Canada to US refineries on the Gulf Coast — and an equally controversial pipeline crossing in North Dakota, Fox News and Bloomberg reported.
Former president Barack Obama had rejected Keystone under pressure from environmental activists.
The Canadian government led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has cautiously supported the plan, seeing it as a means of boosting business.
But Canada’s liberal leader has also helped wage the international charge against climate change.
The Dakota Access Pipeline has become more of a political hot potato in the United States.
Native Americans and their supporters strongly protested against the project, prompting the US Army Corps of engineers — which has approval authority — to nix the plans under the Obama administration.
Thousands had camped in freezing winter temperatures to block the oleoduct’s planned route.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is concerned about potential water pollution, saying the pipeline’s route endangers areas with sacred historic artifacts.
The standoff — which included some 2,000 military veterans who joined the protest — prompted violent clashes with law enforcement as well as sympathetic demonstrations nationwide.
But Trump has supported the 1,172-mile (1,886-kilometer) oil pipeline, which would snake through four US states.
Trump to approve controversial Keystone, Dakota pipelines
Trump to approve controversial Keystone, Dakota pipelines
Nigeria signals more strikes likely in ‘joint’ US operations
- Nigeria on Friday signalled more strikes against jihadist groups were expected after a Christmas Day bombardment by US forces against militants in the north of the country
LAGOS: Nigeria on Friday signalled more strikes against jihadist groups were expected after a Christmas Day bombardment by US forces against militants in the north of the country.
The west African country faces multiple interlinked security crises in its north, where jihadists have been waging an insurgency in the northeast since 2009 and armed “bandit” gangs raid villages and stage kidnappings in the northwest.
The US strikes come after Abuja and Washington were locked in a diplomatic dispute over what Trump characterised as the mass killing of Christians amid Nigeria’s myriad armed conflicts.
Washington’s framing of the violence as amounting to Christian “persecution” is rejected by the Nigerian government and independent analysts, but has nonetheless resulted in increased security coordination.
“It’s Nigeria that provided the intelligence,” the country’s foreign minister, Yusuf Tuggar, told broadcaster Channels TV, saying he was on the phone with US State Secretary Marco Rubio ahead of the bombardment.
Asked if there would be more strikes, Tuggar said: “It is an ongoing thing, and we are working with the US. We are working with other countries as well.”
Targets unclear
The Department of Defense’s US Africa Command, using an acronym for the Daesh group, said “multiple Daesh terrorists” were killed in an attack in the northwestern state of Sokoto.
US defense officials later posted video of what appeared to be the nighttime launch of a missile from the deck of a battleship flying the US flag.
Which of Nigeria’s myriad armed groups were targeted remains unclear.
Nigeria’s jihadist groups are mostly concentrated in the northeast of the country, but have made inroads into the northwest.
Researchers have recently linked some members from an armed group known as Lakurawa — the main jihadist group located in Sokoto State — to Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), which is mostly active in neighboring Niger and Mali.
Other analysts have disputed those links, though research on Lakurawa is complicated as the term has been used to describe various armed fighters in the northwest.
Those described as Lakurawa also reportedly have links to Al-Qaeda affiliated group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), a rival group to ISSP.
While Abuja has welcomed the strikes, “I think Trump would not have accepted a ‘No’ from Nigeria,” said Malik Samuel, an Abuja-based researcher for Good Governance Africa, an NGO.
Amid the diplomatic pressure, Nigerian authorities are keen to be seen as cooperating with the US, Samuel told AFP, even though “both the perpetrators and the victims in the northwest are overwhelmingly Muslim.”
Tuggar said that Nigerian President Bola Tinubu “gave the go-ahead” for the strikes.
The foreign minister added: “It must be made clear that it is a joint operation, and it is not targeting any religion nor simply in the name of one religion or the other.”
