The Pipeline & Jobs

On May 4, 2012 ABCNews.go.com it was said the Republicans have been pounding President Barack Obama for rejecting the controversial Keystone XL pipeline which would stretch from Canada to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. And then in March (March 22 we heard that the President fast tracked the oil pipeline between Oklahoma and Texas and the Republicans said it’s too little, too late) Obama drew fire from environmentalists for approving the southern part of the project.

The State Department announced in a statement that the Canadian company behind the effort, TransCanada, had submitted (reported April 19) a new permit application for a pipeline running from the Canadian border to an existing pipeline in Nebraska. (This new pipeline is a necessary segment of the overall Keystone XL.) The Obama administration had blocked the project amid environmental concerns in Nebraska which led TransCanada to devise an alternate route. The state is expected to take six to nine months to review that new path. "The Department is committed to conducting a rigorous, transparent and thorough review," it said in the statement. "We will consider this new application on its merits ... this involves consideration of many factors, including energy security, health, environmental, cultural, economic, and foreign policy concerns." The State Department noted in its statement that "previously when we announced review of alternate routes through Nebraska this past fall, our best estimate on when we would complete the national interest determination was the first quarter of 2013." "We will conduct our review efficiently, using existing analysis as appropriate," it said.

Republicans pounced on the news, urging the President to cut off the State Department review. "Today there is just one person standing in the way of tens of thousands of new American jobs: President Obama," Republican House Speaker John Boehner charged in a statement. "After nearly four years of review, delay and politics, he is out of excuses for blocking this job-creating energy project any longer." Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said "At a moment when tensions are rising in the Middle East, millions of Americans are struggling to find work and millions more are struggling with the rising cost of gas, the Obama administration's opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline shows how deeply out of touch they are with the concerns of middle-class Americans. When it comes to delays over Keystone, anyone looking for a culprit should look no further than the Oval Office".

How many jobs the $7 billion pipeline would actually create—and for how long—is hotly debated. The project would require hiring thousands of construction workers while it is being built. But a top TransCanada executive told CNN in an interview late last year that the number of permanent jobs would be "in the hundreds, certainly not in the thousands."

The project faced fresh criticism from environmentalists. "The Keystone XL would have tremendous environmental impact from the expansion of destructive tar sands extraction, the risk of tar sands spills across US rivers and aquifers and increased refinery and greenhouse gas emissions," said Anthony Swift, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Here’s what I got out of this – the Republicans continue to exaggerate the number of jobs and don’t care about the environment or people’s safety. On May 1 it was reported that ExxonMobil is cleaning up 80,000 gallons of oil that spilled from a Louisiana pipeline. I looked at other websites and found it interesting that the Indian Country website said the Canadian Indians have a lawsuit pending against TransCanada and the Canadian government for ripping them off and that the Canadians said they will go ahead with production with or without the US and use an alternate route for getting oil to Asia. It is not expected that the administration will approve the pipeline before the election. There are other ways to create jobs than this pipeline. On February 23 we heard that during the 1980s and 1990s 600,000 call center jobs went overseas and the CEO of NOVO 1 now has 5 centers in the US and is teaming up with other call centers to bring back 100,000. On May 2 Donny McCall a North Carolina contractor who created Invis-A-Rack was told by Shark Tank to take his business to China and he wouldn’t so they all turned him down; after the show all of what he had on hand was sold out, an Iowa manufacturer has contacted him to produce the product here and Home Depot called him because they love the product. On May 3 a South Carolina baker got support from Shark Tank to start up Daisy Cakes; they created 240 baker jobs and make 5,000 cakes a day; they use dry ice to ship cakes. On May 4 the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported unemployment dropped to 8.1% and among those hit the hardest were construction (2 million jobs lost), teachers and principals (281,000) and public safety workers (123,000). (A Georgia teacher has had 57 students in her class; I’m all for larger class sizes but this is ridiculous.) It was also said that the millions of workers hired have reached their plateau (they’re working at maximum capacity) and companies may be forced to start hiring. Republicans need to tell their rich cronies to dig into their profits and start hiring; they also need to approve infrastructure projects instead of continuing to force the pipeline on us.