A Tiny Town's XL Hopes

Biden’s cancellation of a controversial oil pipeline shocks Alberta’s Oyen, where the arrival of construction crews bolstered businesses

- Cristina Lindblad

On the snowy prairies of western Canada, a tiny town is grappling with the fallout from the 12-year saga of the world’s most controversial oil pipeline.

On his first day as U.S. president, Joe Biden signed an executive order rescinding TC Energy Corp.’s permission to build the $8 billion Keystone XL. The 1,210-mile pipeline was designed to carry more than 800,000 barrels a day of Canadian oil sands crude to refineries in the U.S. when it entered service in 2023. It was also supposed to create about 13,000 union jobs.

Biden’s decision may have fallen hardest on the eastern Alberta farming town of Oyen, where work on the project was already under way and local businesses were reaping the rewards. Even though Biden had pledged during his campaign to cancel Keystone XL, the news still came as a shock to the town’s mayor, Doug Jones. “I did not expect to see that in the first hundred days,” he says.

In recent months, Oyen had been buzzing with activity. Its population of 922 more than doubled with the arrival of about 1,000 workers. Some rented rooms in local homes, others bunked at so-called man camps. Altogether, they injected as much as C$4 million ($3.1 million) of extra spending into the local economy every month, Jones figures, helping counteract the drag from the pandemic.

Debmart Cafe & Convenience on Main Street, a popular spot for sandwiches and eggs Benedict, was reeling from Covid-19 restrictions in March before the pipeline crews arrived. “We had to lay everyone off when it first came into effect that they shut everything down,” says owner Deb Schiebelbein, adding that business had “at least doubled” since the pipeline workers came.