RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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This story is produced by Montana Free Press / Mountain Journal in collaboration with Grist as part of the Report for America Local News Initiative .
The Bridger Pipeline Expansion project has been moving through the permitting process with unusual speed. If built, the $2 billion, 650-mile pipeline will run through Montana and Wyoming and is one of three proposed pipeline legs connecting oil sands in Alberta, Canada to the trading hub in Cushing, Oklahoma.
The project appears to be a priority for the Trump administration. The Bureau of Land Management announced that the pipeline will receive an expedited environmental review, and in late April, the administration granted the pipeline developer a cross-border permit to pass into the U.S. Permitting documents show the company, Bridger Pipeline Expansion, LLC, a subsidiary of Wyoming-based True Companies, hopes to break ground as soon as July 2027, pending state and federal approval.
But the project has hit a stumbling block. On July 22, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, withdrew a waiver it had previously granted the pipeline.
The waiver allowed the company to omit certain financial information and baseline environmental data from its state permit application with DEQ. Pipeline construction cannot begin without this permit and final federal approval.
At the core of the debate is Montana’s Major Facility Siting Act, a state law that outlines the process of evaluating the potential economic, community, and environmental impacts of large energy projects like pipelines or power plants. Earlier this year, Bridger requested a waiver to omit certain financial and economic information, as well as baseline environmental data from its application to DEQ. The law allows for “irrelevant information” to be omitted from the review process, and DEQ granted Bridger the waiver in February. The agency is now backtracking on that decision.
In June, the environmental law firm Earthjustice filed a complaint on behalf of two Montana residents against DEQ’s decision to grant the waiver. Lars Phillips, an attorney with Earthjustice said the information needed to be included in order to have a thorough review process.
“The law is clear, and DEQ was right to reverse course,” Phillips said. “But we are troubled by why DEQ decided to issue these waivers in the first place.”
Projects of this size and scale require both state and federal approval. Montana DEQ, along with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, held a public comment period on the pipeline proposal in May. Phillips said without Earthjustice taking this action to discover what information was waived, members of the public would never have known they were commenting on an incomplete application.
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The proposed pipeline is expected to move roughly 500,000 barrels of crude tar sands oil per day, according to DEQ documents . But at full capacity, that number is projected to increase to moving 1.13 million barrels per day from Canada, through Montana and into Wyoming.
The project has been referred to by supporters as “Keystone Light,” referencing the Keystone XL Pipeline, which then-President Joe Biden canceled in 2021. Shannon James with environmental watchdog Montana Environmental Information Center said calling it “light” is a misnomer. “It’s Keystone XXL and a major climate threat that far too many people haven’t heard about yet,” she said.
James and other opponents have raised concerns over the potential environmental harms the pipeline’s proposed path would take, a route that would cross water 150 times.
“Pipelines leak,” James said. “It’s not a matter of if, but when. We should not be giving the green light to a company with a troubling track record in our state, especially before it has fully disclosed the impacts this project would have on Montana’s people, water, wildlife, and climate.”
In an email to Earthjustice shared with Montana Free Press, Jeremiah Langston, a lawyer for DEQ, said the agency is “requiring Bridger to produce the information in question” to move forward with the application. Permitting for the project cannot proceed until the application is complete, Langston said, and it’s up to Bridger to submit the additional information DEQ requires.
Phillips maintains it’s a positive sign to see DEQ addressing gaps in the application, but said he would have liked to see the agency more proactively inform the public.
“It is unfortunate that it took two Montanans standing up to big oil to force DEQ to require Bridger to comply with Montana law,” he said.
Editor’s note: Earthjustice is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In Montana, a controversial $2B pipeline hits a speed bump on Aug 7, 2026.
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