Keystone pipeline delay backfires on Obama, Dems
By Adriana Cohen
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
For six years, under heavy pressure from environmental groups, President Obama and countless Democrats have blocked passage of the Keystone project — a Canadian energy pipeline that would have shipped oil from Alberta to the U.S., creating thousands of jobs.
A U.S. State Department review found that the pipeline would create upward of 42,000 jobs during the construction period alone. Economists, meanwhile, have found that the pipeline would create 20,000 manufacturing and construction jobs and an additional 118,000 spinoff jobs, according to media reports.
The president has refused to greenlight the project despite the obvious need for U.S. manufacturing jobs. Instead, Obama and fellow Democrats have bowed to environmental groups and strangled the energy project in red tape.
Canada has had enough. They have decided to circumvent Obama and his posse of misguided environmentalists and go East. A Canadian energy company, Energy East, is planning to build its own major oil pipeline, bypassing the United States completely and shipping its crude directly overseas. End result? Canada wins. The U.S. loses tens of thousands of jobs. The environment isn’t benefited whatsoever.
This is what happens when liberals implement job-killing regulation without looking at the big picture or examining the unintended consequences.
“The new pipeline will cost $10.7 billion and could be up and running by 2018. Its 2,858-mile path, taking advantage of a vast length of existing and underused natural gas pipeline, would wend through six provinces and four time zones. It would be Keystone on steroids, more than twice as long and carrying a third more crude,” reports Bloomberg.
This is not how to protect Mother Earth or how to do business with our biggest ally. The environment doesn’t benefit by blocking the Keystone XL by having a much larger pipeline being built in its place. Thousands of needed U.S. jobs are lost and environmentalists have egg on their face. Or should we say Democrats?
Bottom line: With $18 trillion in national debt and millions of Americans unemployed, the U.S. government should be implementing policy that grows our economy and creates needed jobs. Cowering to special interest groups is not the way to achieve those objectives.
Adriana Cohen is a Boston Herald columnist and radio host. Visit adrianacohen.com and follow her on Twitter @AdrianaCohen16.
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