by Thomas Catenacci
The Daily Caller

President Joe Biden may not have had to loosen sanctions on Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro’s government if he hadn’t nixed the Keystone XL pipeline.

The Keystone XL pipeline, the permit of which Biden revoked shortly after taking office, would have imported enough heavy crude into the U.S. to offset any need for Venezuelan imports, according to a review by The Daily Caller News Foundation. On Tuesday, the Biden administration moved to ease some of the sanctions former President Donald Trump placed on Venezuelan energy in 2019 in an effort to curb oil and gasoline prices.

While the Keystone XL pipeline wasn’t expected to be operational until 2023, Reuters reported, it’s unclear when the U.S. will begin importing oil from Venezuela under the Biden administration’s deal…

“Who wouldn’t rather buy Canadian oil than Venezuelan oil?” Steve Milloy, a former Trump administration transition official and JunkScience.com founder, told TheDCNF in an interview. “Canada is our close neighbor to the north. Venezuela is a hostile dictatorship that tortures its people. Why would we want to fund that versus Canada?”

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