Posted on 01/15/2012 3:19:29 PM PST by jazusamo
When U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue proclaimed that the Keystone XL pipeline would create 250,000 jobs, he touched a nerve in the environmental community.
“That’s just not true,” Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s international program, told reporters Friday, calling Donohue’s jobs estimate “wildly inflated.”
It’s a familiar refrain from the environmental community, which has been working overtime in recent weeks to counter Republican and industry claims that the 1,700-mile pipeline would create a mini-job boom in the United States.
The fight over the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry oil sands crude from Alberta to the Gulf Coast, is increasingly becoming a knock-down, drag-out fight over jobs.
And with President Obama slated to make a decision on the pipeline by Feb. 21 under a provision included in a payroll-tax-cut package, the pressure is on.
The fight over jobs is a pivotal issue in the Keystone XL war. Green groups have seized on the issue, realizing that their concerns about the environmental implications of the project are not enough to counter Republican support for the project. And the GOP hopes to inflict political damage on Obama going into the 2012 election by arguing that the rejection of the pipeline would be a missed opportunity to mend the ailing economy.
Supporters of the pipeline, armed with a handful of industry-sponsored studies, say the pipeline will create 20,000 temporary construction and manufacturing jobs in the short-term, along with hundreds of thousands of indirect jobs in the coming decades.
But opponents of the project, who have studies of their own, say the numbers are significantly lower.
The 20,000-job figure comes from a study commissioned by TransCanada Corp., the company hoping to build the pipeline. As the Feb. 21 deadline for Obama to issue a final verdict on the project approaches, TransCanada released a more detailed explanation of its job estimate this week.
Construction of the pipeline will create about 13,000 temporary jobs, according to TransCanada. That’s 500 workers for each of the 17 pipeline segments, 100 workers for each of the 30 pump stations, 600 jobs at various construction camps and 1,000 jobs focused on management and inspection.
In addition, TransCanada estimates that the project will result in 7,000 manufacturing jobs at companies that make key components of the pipeline.
“These are new, real U.S. jobs,” TransCanda CEO Russ Girling said in a statement this week.
Pipeline supporters also say the pipeline will create hundreds of thousands of indirect jobs. Many of those jobs would come from ramped up petrochemical, plastics and fertilizer production along the pipeline route. Supporters even count increased tourism and new restaurants in the figures.
Environmental groups say the industry jobs numbers are greatly exaggerated, citing a study by the Cornell University Global Labor Institute.
The study says the pipeline will create “no more than 2,500-4,650 temporary direct construction jobs for two years.”
The pipeline “will not be a major source of US jobs, nor will it play any substantial role at all in putting Americans back to work,” the study says.
Lara Skinner, associate director of research at Cornell’s Global Labor Institute, said TransCanada’s job numbers are artificially high because the company inflated how much the pipeline will cost to build in the United States.
Skinner also said that TransCanada ignored the fact that many of the jobs it cites won’t last the full two years it will take to build the pipeline.
“TransCanada’s numbers are unsubstantiated,” Skinner told reporters Friday on a conference call organized by the NRDC. “The U.S. needs a jobs plan, but Keystone XL is not it.”
Opponents of the project also point to a study by the State Department that says the project will result in about 5,000 construction jobs.
TransCanada dismissed the Cornell study and the criticism from environmental groups Friday.
“Why groups like NRDC and Cornell continue to question job creation in the United States is a concern,” TransCanada spokesman Terry Cunha said. “None of them are pipe engineers or experts.
“We fully understand the jobs that are needed to build a piece of infrastructure of this size. We like to think of ourselves as the experts.”
Martin Durbin, a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the powerful oil industry trade group, echoed TransCanada’s comments.
“The allegations they are putting out there are a sideshow,” he said.
If anyone needs proof Obama is anti-American, this is it...
The reason Obama opposes the Keystone pipeline is that it would not be a government financed project.
It’s not that HE wouldn’t get credit for it, he would, but so would capitalism, and we simply cannot have that on Obama’s watch.
Remember, he is first and foremost a socialist. This means that the government must be the fount of all good, and the pipeline would be totally financed by the private sector.
Unions? Private sector unions now know where they stand. They shall benefit only if the government can take credit.
Idiots. This would affect our whole balance of trade, and at the same time, drive down the price of crude, which is the main source of income of the Islamists, and would have a wide affect on the price of other commodities. I bet some interests are funding the environmentalists to keep things on their present course. Maybe even some pubbies who have friends in the Middle East.
There are 160,000 miles of pipeline crisscrossing the United States today. The Keystone pipeline is 1,700 miles from the one source of oil outside the US that is secure as our own oil. The Keystone will be built with 2011 technology and will carry oil not only from the Canada oil sands, but from the Bakken oil shale in North Dakota and Montana. The amount of oil flowing through the pipeline would represent 4.5% of our annual usage. Montana Governor is Brian Schweitzer (D
You’re probably right. I’m no expert by any means but I believe we have refineries in TX built to process heavy crude from Venezuela which this crude would partially replace.
Instead of going after venture capitalists , Newt should be going after Hussein on this issue. Where are the jobs Barry?
Well of course. All construction jobs are temporary. If I hired a construction company to build me a three bedroom house, i'd be pissed if ten years later theyre still working on it.
these guys almost make a case for jobs - we need 30 people at pump stations - then the fail to mention where the heck those pumps might be lcoated. Then mention mnaufactturing jobs but fail to mention tha it takes a fact ____ number of days for all ____ men in the factory and all the supprot staff to pump on 2000 miles of rolled steel and then it take ___ nubmer of trucks and trucker to take the steel pipe to lcoations...they get half way to what the busy public needs and then they shut up. They all must be members of the republcan (stupid party). THEY CAN’T SELL AN IDEA the public supprots.
The pipeline could also carry the increasing amount oil being pumped from the wells in western North Dakota What is wrong with developing American oil using American companies and making jobs for American workers? Obama’s dithering and pandering to environmental whackos will push the Canadians to build their own pipeline to the west coast and sell their oil to China.
In their defense, I must say that environmentalists are all experts in "wildly inflating" outcomes.
Still, completely pathetic. Their position--"Well, it won't create nearly the number of jobs they say it will"--is, in the middle of the worst economy in 80 years, about as close to bankruptcy as an argument gets.
There's no doubt at all that this will create short term and long term jobs plus benefit our energy needs. We have a turkey in the WH that has to go, for the good of the country.
Nope, here is the real reason:
See #728 Fossil fuel
Absolutely...With the position our country is in now regarding jobs we need all we can get and these jobs would be private sector jobs, both short and long term.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Clean-air agreements signed by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and two Canadian provinces could dramatically slow oil production in the Alberta tar sands...Ontario and British Columbia have agreed to adhere to California's low-carbon fuel standards, which means the provinces will have to curb oil production sources that create high amounts of global-warming emissions...Nine other U.S. northeastern states, plus Illinois, Quebec and Manitoba are all expected to sign on to California's low-carbon fuel standard,...In recent years Canada has overtaken Saudi Arabia as the leading source of U.S. oil imports...The authors of California's new standard say oil companies must adapt or risk losing business.
If this were a “Green” project blessed by the NIMBY’s and Eco-Nuts they would insist that it will create two million jobs and culminate in the “Green Revolution’, as if that was a good thing.
Green = OK to inflate job numbers.
Proven real world tech. = Benefits MUST be minimized and denied.
The left has no problem supporting the proposed pipeline if it is built by and for the Chinese Government. This is the real effort and reason that Obama will not support the pipeline for America, the Chicoms have their nose under the tent as it pertains to the pipeline, they are proposing building a line all the way to the coastline in BC and have it piped directly to their waiting oil tankers. This is not wishful thinking on their behalf, it is in the works and Obama is quietly backing it. The traitorous actions of his administration has hundreds of “deals” they are working on and we will, once again, be unaware until it is signed and delivered to China.
Oil s fungible, of course. Alaska oil goes to Japan. What it would do of course is to increase the supply, and more immediately, the supply of gasoline. Fact is, though, up until after WWII, the supplied most of the world’s petroleum products. Then came the mideast oil,almost all of which went to Europe. It certainly would take away a lot of the leverage of the national oil companies. Like Venezuela and other enemies of the United States.
Marx says the value of an item is determined by the labor required for production. Lets also include profit.
Some very round numbers:
Projected cost of XL pipeline 13 billion dollars.
Profit ~20% (Dreamland for today’s contractors)
Total Cost of typical job $100k
3 Billion profit This amount did not die here but did not create or save many jobs in this step,
10 Billion equals One Hundred Thousand jobs.
As the money echoes through the economy start with the $13B subtract 30% for tax and 20% profit. (HALF).
The profit would not disappear at each step, but there is quite a bit of lost motion.
100k primary jobs, 100k+ secondary.
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