Nebraska PSC Approves Keystone XL Pipeline Route Despite Eminent Domain Controversy and Landowner Opposition

The Nebraska Public Service Commission votes 3-2 to approve TransCanada Corporation’s application for route approval for the Keystone XL Pipeline, clearing a major obstacle for the controversial tar sands oil pipeline after nearly a decade of fierce opposition from Nebraska landowners, Indigenous tribes, and environmental groups. The PSC approves the Keystone Mainline Alternative Route rather than TransCanada’s preferred route, adding approximately 5 miles of pipeline, an additional pumping station, and shifting the route further east away from the ecologically sensitive Nebraska Sandhills. The approval comes just days after the existing Keystone Pipeline spilled 210,000 gallons of oil in South Dakota, underscoring the environmental risks that landowners and tribal nations have long warned about.

The PSC decision culminates a bitter legal battle over TransCanada’s use of eminent domain—the power to seize private property for public use—for what critics argue is private corporate profit, not public benefit. TransCanada filed multiple rounds of eminent domain cases against Nebraska farmers and ranchers refusing to surrender their land, claiming pipeline company rights under state law despite being a foreign corporation. Domina Law Group represented landowners in challenging these condemnation lawsuits, forcing TransCanada to abandon its first round of eminent domain cases in 2015 before filing new claims. Opponents argue that granting eminent domain to a foreign oil company sets a dangerous precedent for transferring American land to corporations through permanent easements that allow additional pipelines without further compensation—essentially locking landowners into unfair contracts in perpetuity.

The approval reveals regulatory capture dynamics where a state commission prioritizes corporate interests over property rights, tribal sovereignty, and environmental protection. TransCanada sought to avoid formal consultation with the Ponca Nation by re-routing around tribal land, demonstrating what Bold Nebraska organizer Jane Kleeb calls corporate cowardice in evading legal obligations to Indigenous peoples. The PSC process provides limited meaningful opportunities for landowners to contest the fundamental use of eminent domain for private gain, instead focusing narrowly on route selection. Even after the Keystone XL project is ultimately canceled by President Biden in 2021, TransCanada (rebranded as TC Energy) retains ownership of hundreds of miles of easements and rights-of-way across Nebraska farmland because state laws require no return of condemned property when pipeline projects are abandoned—leaving landowners permanently burdened by easements for pipelines that will never be built, exemplifying how eminent domain powers can be exploited for corporate land acquisition regardless of whether projects serve any public purpose.