President Barack Obama’s delay in approving the Keystone pipeline is snagging a potential of 20,000 jobs, and another 500,000 jobs that the project would create indirectly.
The president has the final vote on the TransCanada Co.’s construction of the $13 billion Keystone XL pipeline, which could produce almost half a million gallons of crude oil a day. Proponents say it could generate 20,000 direct jobs and a half-million indirect positions, as well as injecting hundreds of millions of dollars into local communities.
Democrats, environmental groups, and Hollywood activists have targeted the project during three years of environmental reviews and legislative delays.
“The Keystone pipeline has already been held up for more than three years, despite being deemed environmentally sound,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told
HumanEvents.com.
“Pushing this decision past the next election may appease President Obama’s ultra-liberal base, but it won’t help Americans struggling to find jobs and deal with the high cost of gas.”
TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard told Human Events: “The opposition is very coordinated and very well funded. They would like to spin this as big oil versus the little guy, but they have 60 registered lobbyists. They have outspent on lobbying and on a PR campaign, and this is part of a very well-coordinated effort to defeat the pipeline in the mistaken belief that if they stop the pipeline they will cut off the ability to get more oil from Alberta,” Canada.
“It’s very much an anti-fossil-fuel movement and, as we’ve seen during the process, they have no issue with misrepresenting a project that is not even close to the truth,” Howard said. “It’s designed to scare people. They follow a very predictable playbook that way.”
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