> rather that the analysis wasn't as thorough as necessary.
It was revoked because it was illegally issued (in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and thr Administrative Procedure Act) because the analysis was not sufficient to meet the legal requirements for issuing it.
The previous permit was revoked by a court due to NEPA issues.
Then-President Trump subsequently issued a permit himself using his presidential power: this one didn't require a NEPA environmental review because neither NEPA nor the APA apply to actions by the President. The whole thing is a little wonky because both the older and newer ones are "presidential" permits, but since the State Department had actually issued the prior one, the APA and NEPA applied.
The permit President Biden revoked was Trump's replacement one.
His permit wasn't illegal, just not through the usual processes. It's very on-brand for him in a variety of ways.
This permit system arises from a series of executive orders that normally delegate authority to the State Department. By hooking in the State Department, the NEPA environmental review requirements (which apply to Federal agencies) get triggered.
While the Obama administration likely purposely slow-rolled many of these permits (including Keystone XL's) before ultimately denying them, the Trump administration as a matter of policy fast-tracked them for approval and also invited new applications where things had been previously denied. Keystone XL was one of these re-applications.
Trump's State Department did an environmental review, mostly relying on earlier work, and quickly issued the permit. The administration later lost in court with the court saying the review was insufficient. They probably could have done another one and just reissued it that way: courts saying "do more NEPA," agencies taking a long time to come to the same conclusion, and the result simply being delayed is not uncommon in these kinds of reviews.
But environmental impact statements take a long time, and instead of doing that they just had the President personally issue the permit and thereby sidestep the requirement to do the review at all.
Legal doesn't mean "criminal or not criminal", it is about adhering to legal processes. Even if these rules are set by executive-derived departments, they have to be followed or a court may block actions (via injunction) or otherwise the organization will not progress in pursuit of something like a permit request. Norms are a testament to historic quagmires (both legal and process-wise) that the organizations have experienced and try to avoid.
In the case of Trump's order, it was legal in the sense that it circumvented those rules altogether as it was outside most of the legal machinations. An order for the permit and was enacted directly by the executive head. This does not preclude a challenge in the judicial arenas (which is what happened). You can sue about anything in the US, even if the POTUS ordered it, and it gets a hearing if there's the slightest political support.
Yes it does.
> rather that the analysis wasn't as thorough as necessary.
It was revoked because it was illegally issued (in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and thr Administrative Procedure Act) because the analysis was not sufficient to meet the legal requirements for issuing it.