Plains All American Pipeline is denied an exclusion to the Trump administration’s tariff on imported steel pipe, in the first such ruling on a major energy project since the tariff went into effect, Seeking Alpha reported.
The Commerce Department says it denied the request because suitable product is available from domestic producers for the company's Cactus II pipeline project; Plains claimed in its application that only three steel mills in the world could produce the material it needs, and none are in the U.S.
Plains says it will still build the $1.2B, 550-mile pipeline from the Permian Basin to the Texas Gulf coast with steel from Greece, but calla the rejection “unjust” because it had ordered the steel last year, prior to the tariff decision.
Plains has not said how much the tariffs could increase the project’s cost.
The Commerce Department has not yet ruled on similar pipeline requests made by Kinder Morgan (NYSE:KMI), Williams Cos. (WMB, WPZ) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A, RDS.B).
