who ever gets the Rep nod should declare XL as a first order priority...
Posted on 11/12/2011 8:02:12 AM PST by Kaslin
The decision by the Obama administration to delay any action on the XL Keystone pipeline until after the election is a fitting development for an administration that has pursued a bankrupt energy policy, a bankrupt jobs policy and is quite literally bankrupting the country with politics thinly veiled as policy.
And the beauty for Obama in this latest axe he's taken to jobs in the USA is that he doesn't even have consider Congress while he's swinging it. He can kill close to a half-a-million jobs all on his own.
“The State Department said Thursday it would take up to 18 months to review alternative routes for the Keystone expansion,” reports MarketWatch, “so it avoids carrying heavy Canadian crude past Nebraska's environmentally sensitive Sand Hills region and a major regional aquifer.”
The pipeline could ultimately supply about a million barrels of Canadian oil to the US per day and 400,000 US jobs, most of them almost immediately. But instead, the president, who has been railing against Congress for not passing another expensive jobs bill just killed 400,000 American jobs, while making sure the price of gas stays high for citizens.
And despite everything the Obama administration has done to slow down domestic development of oil and gas resources, the oil and gas sector is one of the fastest growing jobs markets in a very anemic job market. While other sectors are shedding jobs, oil and gas is hot.
“The six fastest-growing jobs for 2010-11,” according to Economic Modeling Specialists Inc’s (EMSI) latest quarterly employment data, “are related to oil and gas extraction. This includes service unit operators, derrick operators, rotary drill operators, and roustabouts. Each is expected to grow anywhere from 9% to 11% through this year, in an otherwise mostly stagnant economy.”
Imagine what would happen if we could get Obama to cooperate with creating jobs just a little bit.
The State Department had already issued an approval for the XL Keystone project back in August and it was just waiting on Obama’s desk for action.
Obama could have approved the pipeline easily on economic grounds- the project will create 20,000 construction jobs, plus another 350,000 ancillary jobs- but he’s being bullied by his friends on the left to stop the project in its tracks. The green meanies want him to put their anti-growth, anti-development, anti-job, misanthropic agenda above the welfare and prosperity of US citizens…again.
And he’s complied with them now temporarily, likely with the message that if they get him reelected, he’ll kill the project permanently.
Environmental whackos have been getting arrested by appointment at the White House for the last two months hoping to put pressure on Obama to scuttle the most significant development in energy for our country in the last 50 years.
If successful, the Keystone pipeline will not only significantly reduce US imports of oil from place like the Middle East and Latin America, but it will also help open up huge new oil resources in the United States by providing the confidence to develop oil reserves in the Rocky Mountain region.
While it’s estimated that Canada may have as much as 2 trillion barrels of oil in reserves, “the U.S. Geological Survey estimates the [US] has 4.3 trillion barrels of in-place oil shale resources centered in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, said Helen Hankins, Colorado director for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management” according to the Associated Press.
4.3 trillion barrels is 16 times the reserves of Saudi Arabia or enough oil to supply the US for 600 years.
But the newest delay has noting to do with aquifers in Nebraska; rather it has to do with activists on the left who want no fossil energy development under any circumstances. Obama thinks that if he alienates these activists, that he can forget about reelection. He’s already alienated the right and center. The only place he has to go is to the left.
The left doesn’t care about jobs. They only care about their agenda.
"The road to viability for the oil shale industry is reliant on a predictable regulatory structure and an environment in which companies can invest in research and development and create jobs," said Congressman Scott Tipton (R-CO), who has accused Obama of delaying the commercial extraction of shale oil by adding regulatory obstacles.
"The proper implementation of our environmental and safety regulations already on the books is a far better strategy than adding additional layers of bureaucracy to the process," said Tipton who held hearings on the subject in Colorado in the summer.
Earlier this summer the high priest of climate change, Nobel Prize winner, Al Gore blasted Obama for being timid on environmental matters, perhaps because he sensed a sell-out coming.
It will be a tough sell to the American people struggling under massive unemployment that the 400,000 jobs that could have been created by Keystone aren’t more important than the worries of environmentalists who think that a grouse has more value than a baby.
After all, the oil shipped through Keystone will replace oil that is being purchased from countries that don’t like us very much. And the project will add good paying, US jobs.
And this latest delay will undercut Obama’s demand that Congress pass his jobs bill “immediately,” a demand that started before the bill had even been written.
“The question, then, is, will Congress do something?" the president said at a press conference when he announced his jobs bull, but before he presented it to Congress.
"If Congress does something, then I can't run against a do-nothing Congress. If Congress does nothing, then it's not a matter of me running against them. I think the American people will run them out of town, because they are frustrated."
Frustrated? Yeah.
Obama still doesn’t understand the half of it.
It will be US Against Him until he’s out of office.
Says it all
You can thank one state for ALL of this Keystone BS, NEBRASKA!
Obama’s jobs plan has not changed since he took office.
He has been killing jobs (to kill America) all along in record numbers in parallel with destroying our capitalist economy.
His agenda has not wavered. And the Marxist Timebomb (Obamacare) had better be stopped too. That will be the finishing touch for the death of our medical industry and the rights of the individual American citizen.
Evil personified.
It a sign of how manipulated the media is. In any sane universe we should be hearing about this 24-7. The President of the USA, for personal political reason, actively went against the best interests of the US and it’s citizens.
Not interested in saving a country or its inhabitants just bringing it to her knees and establishing a serfdom
Of course anything to sink the good old USA,just another nail in the coffin , and yet we the people just stand by and watch it happening , some people make it happen , some people watch it happening , and others wonder what happened, and likely it is being done by a usurper, there is really no excuse for this at all.
The arrogant pos resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave is only for himself
Saved the Volt and union jobs.
It is outrageous to me that the decision of IF or WHERE private enterprise
can or can not build a pipeline requires permission and approval from the executive branch.
who ever gets the Rep nod should declare XL as a first order priority...
"Oh, uh, there won't be any money,
but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness. (and 64 demonic 'virgins' in hell)"
...so at least they still got that going for them - which is nice. [CarlSpacklerVoice -OFF]
TOSS THE Czar/Tsar/Caesar SALADin in 2012
The sad part is, this is an ongoing theme for this administration (remember the drilling ban and Obama’s push to send jobs on the southern coast packing after the deep water horizon).
Yet, this week his approval ratings have gone up after killing 200,000+ jobs in a single stroke!
I don’t get it. This guys approval should be in the single digits after all the damage he has done.
Anybody want to make a bet on whether or not any reporter asks him about this while he is on vacation in Hawaii,Bali, or Australia?
The media is in his pocket, we do not have a free press in America unless it is places like Free Republic.
“It will be a tough sell to the American people struggling under massive unemployment that the 400,000 jobs that could have been created by Keystone aren’t more important than the worries of environmentalists who think that a grouse has more value than a baby.”
No tough sell needed. Most Americans that might vote are too engrossed in non-news nonsense like the Michael Jackson Doc trial to ever learn or care about this deep six of a pipeline that would create jobs and energy security. Most Americans vote for silly reasons like how the candidate looks or what good jokes Jay Leno makes against the GOP candidate. A GOP candidate needs someone like Oprah and George Clooney to endorse him (oh wait, Omama has got them already!) to get on the radar of most of our uninformed voters.
Shippers will start to run rail cars to Prince Rupert/Kitimat to ship oil to China. TransCanada will probably build the pipe in that direction. The Minister of Finance is off to China next week.
This could actually work out very well for TransCanada. They were going to finance Keystone themselves. Now, they might be able to wring very favorable terms from the Chinese. How does a no interest loan sound? Even Geitner doesn't give terms like that.
This should be a huge issue in the US. Obama is shipping jobs and oil to China. I guess he figures that the US he is "remaking" doesn't need jobs or energy.
it figures...
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