Biden Energy Dept. Report Admits Cancellation of Keystone XL Pipeline Cost Multitude of Jobs..
On President Joe Biden’s first day in office, he signed a stack of executive orders and actions, one of which was a reversal of a Trump-era policy authorizing the construction of a major new oil pipeline designed to further America’s energy independence.
When Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline, a concept that had been an on-again, off-again project sponsored by a Canadian company since 2008, critics at the time bemoaned the fact that the U.S. would again become reliant on volatile foreign sources of oil. But more than that, they noted that, during a pandemic-induced economic slowdown, ditching the project would cost tens of thousands of jobs — something the administration and so-called “fact checkers” attempted to debunk.
Late last month, however, the Energy Department noted in a little-publicized year-end report to Congress that, while “the high-end figure overstates jobs,” some studies showed between 16,149 to 59,468 jobs, many temporary, as being lost by the cancellation.
The estimates were taken from a 2014 Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement.
“Construction jobs would be more significant but temporary; if construction were to take two years, about 3,900 direct jobs would be created annually during construction, and 21,050 U.S. total jobs would be created, counting indirect and induced jobs,” the report stated.
“Other estimates for temporary jobs during the construction phase ranged from 16,149 to 59,468 annually for a two-year period. However, the study includes segments of the Keystone pipeline that were not related to the XL portion and jobs corresponding to those sections that were built were realized,” the report continued.
Additionally, the high-end figure comes from this study which faced significant criticism for including in its analysis project inputs from India, Russia, and Russian companies in Canada, thus including jobs outside the United States,” it said.
But the project was about more than just jobs — it was about national security and ensuring a cheap, steady, plentiful supply of energy for Americans, though Biden, in early 2022, claimed the issue was out of his hands, blaming then-spiking oil and gas prices on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
