The Keystone XL Pipeline project is owned by TransCanada, a Canadian corporation which builds, maintains, and owns oil and gas pipelines, power plants, and natural gas storage facilities in North America. TransCanada already owns the Keystone Pipeline which runs in two branches from Alberta to both Nebraska and Illinois. The proposed Keystone XL Pipeline would follow a direct route from Alberta through Montana and South Dakota to Nebraska and then continue through Kansas and Oklahoma to the refineries in Texas along the Gulf Coast. This new pipeline would ideally transport crude petroleum recovered from the Alberta tar sands and from North Dakota shale fields. This petroleum contains more sulfur and requires additional refining which can be completed in Houston refineries.
The chart below compares some of the key facts of these two pipeline projects.
|
Trans-Alaska Pipeline (actual) |
Keystone XL Pipeline (proposal) |
|
| Length |
800 miles |
1,179 miles |
| Maximum capacity in barrels per day |
2.1 million BPD |
830,000 BDP |
| Pipe diameter |
48 inch |
36 inch |
| Estimated cost before construction |
$900 million |
$5.3 billion |
| Actual cost |
$8 billion |
— |
| Construction time |
3 years 2 months |
2 years |
| Starting point |
Prudhoe Bay, Alaska |
Hardisty, Alberta |
| Termination |
Valdez, Alaska |
Houston, Texas |
Employment Estimates
Estimates for job creation statistics for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline’s construction continued to fluctuate from the time it was first planned until the labor was set. In March of 1973, Alyeska estimated that the pipeline would employ 26,000 people in construction jobs. These numbers were later dropped significantly to 18,000 construction jobs in October 1973. By January of 1974, once union contracts for the labor had been negotiated, Alyeska estimated that “perhaps 13,000” jobs would be created, “at its peak.” During the summer of 1974, when initial work on the pipeline was just getting started, the labor force was estimated to grow to more than 14,000 workers by the following spring, when the pipe-laying would begin. When the company began hiring in earnest in March 1975, they estimated that between 14,000 and 18,000 workers would be required that summer. The chart below shows the fluctuations in job predictions for construction workers preceding hiring.
In reality, Alyeska employed 21,000 workers during peak construction in the summers of 1975 and 1976. Despite the fact that Alyeska kept dropping its estimated job numbers, the company employed more workers then all their prediction except for the first. By numbers hired, the project was a huge success. But, how do these estimates compare to the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, and what does this teach us?
The table below illustrates the fluctuations in construction worker job predictions for three different sources: Trans-Canada, the U.S. federal government, and a study conducted by a the Global Labor Institute at Cornell University’s College of Industrial and Labor Relations. Trans-Canada’s job predictions follow a generally similar path to Alyeska’s, in which the job estimates tend to decrease as the project approaches its start date.
