In 2008, TransCanada Corp. announces plans to expand the existing Keystone pipeline to the Gulf coast, and files an application for a presidential permit to construct the new Keystone XL pipeline, which would allow TransCanada to import even more tar sands oil into the U.S. for export to the global market. Indigenous activists, landowners, and grassroots activists begin to fight all along the route of the pipeline. Indigenous activists like Debra White Plume begin to fight the pipeline, along with grassroots activists in East Texas.