Trump demands share of profits in exchange for Keystone approval

He said President Obama, who in November formally rejected a permit for Keystone to cross into the US, “doesn’t know what the hell he is doing”.

The Obama administration’s decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline last year was a huge symbolic victory for America’s environmental movement, which had campaigned for years against the project on the grounds that it would accelerate global warming.

Trump made the comments just hours after securing enough delegates to clinch the Republican presidential nomination and just prior to delivering his first major energy policy speech.

Because it would run along American land, Trump said, the USA deserves “a piece of the profits, because we’re making it happen”.

In the past, Trump has said he would like 25% of the profits from the pipeline.

A spokesman for TransCanada was not immediately available to comment.

Trump said he would pull the United States out of the U.N. global climate accord, approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada and rescind measures by President Barack Obama to cut US emissions and expand protections for USA waterways.

“I think the federal government should get out of the way. I would say energy independence is what we all want, and we also want to sell our energy to other places that don’t have the great natural resources that we have”, Trump said.

“Bernie is going to ban fracking”.

“Any regulation that’s outdated, unnecessary, bad for workers or contrary to the national interest will be scrapped and scrapped completely”, Trump said at the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in Bismarck, the capital of oil-rich North Dakota.

“You do that and we’re going to be back into the Middle East and we’re going to be begging for oil again”.