The survival of the Keystone XL pipeline project is cast further into doubt with the election of a left-wing government in Canada’s wealthiest and most conservative province.

The Guardian reports:

The once-marginal New Democratic Party swept to victory in the western province on Tuesday night, humiliating the Progressive Conservative party that has ruled the province since the first term of US president Richard Nixon.

“We made a little bit of history tonight,” the province’s New Democrat leader, Rachel Notley, told supporters.

The result marks the latest and most surprising setback to prime minister Stephen Harper’s signature diplomatic effort to transport bitumen from Alberta’s tar sands to world markets through the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

During the campaign, Notley promised to withdraw provincial support for the project, raise corporate taxes and also potentially to raise royalties on a regional oil industry already reeling from the collapse in world prices.

Read more here.

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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