Canadian pipeline companies – including TransCanada’s Keystone XL project – will be “welcomed with open arms” into the U.S. if a Republican administration wins the White House, a U.S. congressional representative who’s widely viewed as Donald Trump’s energy advisor vowed on Wednesday.

In an interview with BNN, U.S. Republican Representative Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said that while terms of a new Keystone XL deal would need to be worked out if Trump becomes president, TransCanada chief executive Russ Girling already appears hopeful.

“TransCanada, from what I can tell, is very pleased that Mr. Trump wants to build the Keystone pipeline. That’s certainly a step in the right direction given where we are today,” Cramer said.

“What should never be lost on anyone in the United States is that more Canadian crude oil displacing Venezuelan oil, and creating jobs in our country, is a good deal just at the outset.”

While Trump has been supportive of Keystone XL and the Republican party made the project’s revival part of its official platform, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has publicly opposed it.

In November last year, President Barack Obama rejected a cross-border permit, ending years of suspense over the project. If completed, the proposed 1,897-kilometre Keystone XL pipeline would have carried just under one-quarter of the oil Canada exports daily to U.S. refineries and would have also carried some U.S. oil.

Trump has been supportive of the project, though he has suggested a desire for better terms for the U.S.. Cramer said that may include negotiating more barrels of U.S. crude to be carried by Keystone XL.

“If TransCanada wants the pipeline built… I think any deal that represents national energy security in the U.S., and I think when it comes to energy development, Canada and the United States ought to be more viewed as one, rather than as separate countries,” he said.

Cramer, a self-described climate-change skeptic, was one of Trump’s earliest endorsers. But even he admits the Republican presidential nominee is “a bit of an unusual candidate.”

“When I endorsed him I cringed a few times. I expect to cringe a few more times,” Cramer said. “He’s not status quo for sure.”