Rejection of Keystone XL pipeline hurts nation hungry for jobs

One would think that a project designed to improve our nation’s energy independence would be eagerly embraced in an election year. One would think that a project that would create thousands of jobs would be eagerly embraced in an election year. One would think that a project that would create real momentum for the economy would be eagerly embraced in an election year.

Not so in the view of President Barack Obama, who rejected the Keystone XL pipeline project on Jan. 18. He said a “rushed and arbitrary deadline” prevented the State Department from making a “full assessment of the pipeline’s impact, especially the health and safety of the American people, as well as our environment.”

Apparently the Canadian government is able to make full assessments much faster than that of the United States. Prime Minister Stephen Harper called Keystone a “complete no-brainer.” There you go.

The proposed pipeline would move about 700,000 barrels of oil-like bitumen from oil sands in the province of Alberta to refineries in Texas on a daily basis.

Michael Levi, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and director of the council’s program on energy security and climate change, made an effort to separate Keystone fact from fiction in a Jan. 18 article in the Washington Post.

There are legitimate environmental concerns associated with the project, but as Levi points out, these are the second-largest petroleum deposits in the world. There are issues associated with any energy-related projects, from mining coal to cooling a nuclear reactor.

The Canadians would have been able to set their own price for their product, but surely the laws of supply and demand would have a positive impact on the global marketplace. As long as the product slumbers below the ground, the impact is zero.

We have to realize the bitumen is not going to bubble out of the ground and flow downhill to Texas on its own. Here’s how it works, in a nutshell. Workers will be hired to go to the oil fields and begin to access the product. They will use equipment manufactured just for this purpose. If the equipment is not readily available, factories will have to hire other people to build it. The parts come from outside suppliers, who need everything from sheet metal to paint to socket wrenches to do their jobs.

Once the product is tapped, there has to be a conduit (“the pipeline”) to transport it to its destination. Land will have to be cleared or excavated across hundreds of miles. Someone has to do this, too. And once the product reaches the Lone Star State, it has to be refined, and people will be hired to meet the increased workload. The finished product will be produced entirely within North America, rare in this time of outsourced jobs and foreign domination of the energy industry.

Perhaps most importantly, jobs would be created along the pipeline’s path –

and beyond. Wherever men and women set up shop to extract and ship the product, they will need such essentials as housing, transportation and food.

Likewise for the men and women hired to build the equipment they use. And likewise, the men and women working in the refineries. The president missed the mark in his Jan. 18 statement on the pipeline.

“I’m disappointed that Republicans in Congress forced this decision, but it does not change my administration’s commitment to American-made energy that creates jobs and reduces our dependence on oil,” he said.

Obama said lack of a complete assessment by the State Department risks the health and safety of the American people. From here, it sounds like bureaucracy getting in the way of grass-roots economic recovery.

Earlier this week, Senate Republicans introduced a bill that would have Congress approve the pipeline instead of waiting for the president to grant a permit. Keystone XL would empower individuals from multiple sectors of the American business community to lift themselves out of the logjam of the recession. It is the only project of this size on the nation’s drawing board. It should proceed.

(David F. Sherman a columnist for the Weekly Independent Newspapers of Western New York, a group of community newspapers with a combined circulation of approximately 75,000 homes. Opinions expressed here are those of the author. He can be reached at dsherman@beenews.com)