Keystone pipeline: How many jobs really at stake?
President Obama's move Wednesday to reject a permit to build the Keystone XL pipeline drew fire from supporters of the project, with a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner telling CBS that the decision threatens to "destroy tens of thousands of American jobs."
Yet exactly how much work Keystone, a proposed 1,700-mile pipeline that would transport oil from Alberta, Canada, to the Texas Gulf Coast, would generate remains in dispute. Transcanada (TRP), the energy giant bidding to build the pipeline, projects the undertaking would create 20,000 jobs in the U.S., including 13,000 positions in construction and 7,000 in manufacturing.
That figure, based on a report by a consulting firm hired by Transcanada to assess the project's economic impact, has been widely cited by Keystone backers on Capitol Hill. Other estimates advanced by supporters of the pipeline have been even more optimistic, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce claiming it could create 250,000 permanent U.S. jobs.
Obama denies Keystone XL permit
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But subsequent analysis suggests that Keystone's job-creating potential is more modest. The U.S. State Department calculated last year that the underground pipeline would add 5,000 to 6,000 U.S. jobs. One independent review of Keystone puts that number even lower, with the Cornell University Global Labor Institute finding that the pipeline would add only 500 to 1,400 temporary construction jobs. The authors of the September report also said that much of the new employment stemming from Keystone would be outside the U.S.
Transcanada itself cast doubt on its employment forecast when a vice president for the company told CNN last fall that the 20,000 jobs Keystone would create were temporary and that the project would likely yield only "hundreds" of permanent positions.
Another reason for the discrepancy appears to stem from what that 20,000 figure really means. As Transcanada has conceded, its estimate counted up "job years" spent on the project, not jobs. In other words, the company was counting a single construction worker who worked for two years on Keystone as two jobs, lending fuel to critics who said advocates of the pipeline were overstating its benefits.
The Cornell researchers concluded:
The construction of KXL will create far fewer jobs in the U.S. than its proponents have claimed and may actually destroy more jobs than it generates....
The claim that KXL will create 20,000 direct construction and manufacturing jobs in the U.S. is unsubstantiated. There is strong evidence to suggest that a large portion of the primary material input for KXL -- steel pipe -- will not even be produced in the U.S.
In a statement, President Obama attributed the decision to block construction of the pipeline to "the rushed and arbitrary deadline insisted on by Congressional Republicans," saying it "prevented a full assessment of the pipeline's impact, especially the health and safety of the American people, as well as our environment."
The furor is likely to continue, highlighting the intense election-year politics around Keystone. In urging Obama to approve the project, for instance, Boehner said on Wednesday that the pipeline would create 100,000 new jobs.
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legalizing marijuana will create more jobs and more taxes
going to school and retrain on jobs that are on demand today would also help but the keystone pipeline is not the answer
Those of us living in DC and key electoral battleground states know just how much Big Oil cared about this decision. We were inundated in the last few weeks with more than $600,000 worth of American Petroleum Institute ads declaring that the pipeline is in the country's national interest.
As I recall, before we had affordable energy (which is of no concern to the leftist politcal tryants who buy all of the oil they want and bill it to the taxpayer); is Moochele Obama worried that the taxpayera might not pay for her scores of taxpayer funded megaton oil consuming vacation junkets?
In the pre-industrial age the Indians had no cheap enegy and could not process their wastes so they fouled their water and moved on.
Is this Obama's plan?
The average life span of a pre-industrial man was about 40 years; the only place its lower than this in the USA today is in the ruins of the Democrat control wastland cities like Detriot and Philly.
Those of you living in Washington DC are part of the parasite society who have no idea of how the money you steal from productive America is generated. You are the enemy within - If Iran nuked you it would be doing the nation a favor - Washington the city that takes half of our cash but produced the most vile BS to ever destroy a nation - this is the real pollution
Your call for us to develop our oil resources implies that somehow American citizens will benefit from this. Not likely and not much.
When an oil company (whether US or foreign-owned) produces oil on US land it sells that oil at the world price, which is set by the OPEC cartel. American motorists don't benefit from that oil production, just because it is US-sourced, because the price of gasoline and other refined products are determined by the world oil price. The oil company makes huge profits while the US citizens are left with a smaller resource base of oil for future development.
What we could do is make US citizens a silent partner with any oil company producing our oil. We could do this by including in the auctions for oil tracts a requirement for the purchasing company to rebate to the federal government 50% of the profits it earns from that tract. That's about the only way to align oil company profits with the interests of average Americans who are not sitting on big stock portfolios like to top one percent fat cats.
And before you launch into a knee-jerk diatribe, let me just say that if doing something that benefits ALL of our citizens is labeled SOCIALISM, so be it.
There they have an avalance of stupid peasants that beleive communism kinda works - Our goverment union schools are trying their best to duplicate the stupidity of the Mexican peasants - we're well on our way now.
The Republicans want you to believe that this is all in the best interests of the American people with no provisions that ANY of the fuel will stay in the U.S. What a con job and people keep falling for all of this bull.
When a pipeline construction company moves into an area to start laying pipe:
They have to rent an area for their warehouse, equipment yards, and pipe yards. They then use as many local businesses as possible to stock their warehouse. (Pipelaying is not just big equipment but the thousands of items used daily by their employees) I know not all of these items are made in America but a very large portion are. Here you need to contact a Parts Man for one of the major contractors and they can give you a very good ides.
The people who are employeed by the construction company move into the area: they pay rent, they buy groceries, they eat out, they have to have all the necessities that everyone else does, they are usually still paying bills for their homes where they actually live. You are looking at anywhere from 200 to 500 people moving into an area. Looks like extra income for somebody to me.
You say they are only temporary jobs, tell that to a family that has no income and can go to work even temporarly and put food on their table or pay their rent.