The Keystone Pipeline project was expected to create tens of thousands of high paying jobs in the oil industry. The project itself would create 20,000 construction jobs. And the pipeline would bring oil from Canada and North Dakota to refineries in the United States.
The proposed project would have extended from Alberta, Canada to Illinois, transporting approximately 400,000 barrels of crude oil per day. Estimated cost is $1.7 billion.
But Obama rejected the plan in 2011 and 2014.
Democrats are beholden to the radical green movement – the poor and middle class be damned.
But now that Republicans won control of the US House and Senate – the Democrat-Media Complex is already attacking Republicans for promising to push the project forward.
Far left activist Gail Collins at The New York Times reproted:
The Keystone XL oil pipeline is so popular! Ever since the Republicans won control of the Senate, it’s become the Taylor Swift of political issues.
“We can act on the Keystone pipeline,” said the House speaker, John Boehner, as he launched into his description of the next Congress. The House, which believes strongly in the power of repetition, has already passed a bill authorizing construction of the final phase of the pipeline eight times.
It was also the first thing the future Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, mentioned in his postelection press conference. “When you say energy these days, people think of the Keystone pipeline, but that’s only part of it,” he said. You have to wonder who he’s been hanging around with, since many Americans are actually capable of thinking about energy for quite a long period of time without ever landing on “pipeline from Canada to Nebraska.”
McConnell then went on to describe an energy agenda in which the only specific item he mentioned was you-know-what. (“I mean, the employment figures connected with Keystone are stunning if we would just get going.”)
Actually, employment figures are not that stunning. There’d be a few thousand workers necessary to build it, but if we want construction jobs, we’ve got a ton of roads and bridges that need repair. “Keystone is certainly overhyped as a job creator, mostly because the vast majority of jobs are temporary,” said Tim Boersma of the Brookings Institution.
It’s hard to figure where all the enthusiasm comes from. The Keystone XL would carry oil from the tar sands of Canada to Nebraska, where it would hook up with an existing pipeline to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. Environmentalists hate it because oil from the tar sands expels more carbon into the atmosphere. If the pipeline isn’t built, the oil will still get to the refineries by train, but at least we wouldn’t appear to be encouraging the energy industry to drill the worst stuff possible.
The only people who would seem to have an intense practical interest in which way this plays out would be Nebraskans who will have to live with the pipeline, and the people who control the tar sands land in Canada. That group happens to include the famous campaign-contributing Koch brothers.
