It seems President Obama did not get the memo — he cited environmental concerns as one of his reasons for vetoing the legislation approving the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline last ?Tuesday.
TransCanada Corp’s request to build a 1,179-mile pipeline stretching from Alberta, Canada, to Steele City, Neb., has been a major political topic since 2011, when environmentalists initially began protesting the KXL’s construction.
The pipeline, which would carry 830,000 barrels of Canadian tar sand crude oil, requires a presidential permit because it would cross international borders.
It is strongly opposed by environmentalists due to the potential environmental destruction that would be caused by the pipeline’s implementation, the large investment in an unsustainable form of energy and the especially large amount of damage caused by extracting this particular kind ?of oil.
“Oil from the Canadian tar sands is a very thick, viscous petroleum material, so extracting it involves a very energy-intensive process,” said Michael Hamburger, a professor of geological ?sciences.
According to the State Department’s environmental review of the project, this type of oil produces 14 to 20 percent more greenhouse-gas emissions than the regular oil we use in America.
“Essentially, the investment being made in this infrastructure and pipeline would guarantee that this reserve of fossil fuels will be developed rather than the other more sustainable forms of alternative energy,” Hamburger said.
Supporters of the bill argue the oil will be extracted with or without the pipeline’s construction, it would just have to be transported using less environmentally friendly methods such as railways. The largely Republican group of supporters also cite job creation as one of their main arguments for approving the pipeline’s construction.
“The Keystone XL pipeline would create 42,000 new jobs and pump an additional 2 billion dollars worth of wages into the economy,” Kyle Osting, press secretary for the College Republicans at IU, said. “Now that’s a plan that sounds like middle-class economics.”
According to a report by the Cornell University Global Labor Institute, one of the only non-partisan studies done on the matter, those job estimates may be off by quite a large amount.
The report found that TransCanada’s data, which it submitted to the State House with it’s request for permission to build, only claims the creation of 2,500 to 4,650 temporary construction jobs. Researchers found that the figure claiming the creation of more than 10,000 jobs, which was published in a Perryman Group study, commissioned by TransCanada, was also grossly miscalculated.
“KXL will not be a major source of U.S. jobs, nor will it play any substantial role at all in putting Americans back to work,” the researchers wrote. They added that even if the Perryman Group numbers were correct and all of the workers were hired today, the U.S. seasonally adjusted unemployment rate wouldn’t budge from its current state.
The study actually suggests that the pipeline might create a loss of jobs by diverting investors away from the alternative energy ?sector.
Regardless of job creation, the fact remains that the pipeline would probably be a more efficient and eco-friendly way of transmitting the oil, assuming that the oil will be extracted regardless of the government’s ?decision.
“There’s an opportunity cost of building it and an opportunity cost of not building it,” Economics Professor James Walker said. “The issue is not that much different than the issue of Indiana building the new interstate. It would make transportation more efficient which would help markets, but there’s also environmental degradation.”
The Cornell report said that because of this more efficient form of transportation, the line would actually be diverting oil supplies from Midwest refineries and channeling them instead to the Gulf Coast. This change would lead to Midwesterners paying around 10 to 20 cents more per gallon to fill up their tanks.
President Obama’s veto does not spell the end for the KXL debate.
It is unlikely that lawmakers will get the votes to override the veto, so approval for the pipeline’s construction will probably be subject to the State Department’s administrative review procedure.
President Obama can still approve the project at any time, and Republican lawmakers are threatening to attach legislation approving the construction on to other bills that the president would have a harder time turning down.
The construction of Keystone XL pipeline has become symbolic of a much larger issue. As oil supplies dwindle and technology develops, nations around the globe must begin choosing between what is easy and what is progressive.
Regardless of the pipeline’s perceived benefits and drawbacks, the way the legislation plays out in Washington, D.C., could be an indicator of what energy progress in America will look like for, at the very least, the remainder of this presidential term.
