Energy Policy: The administration plans
to study rerouting the Keystone XL pipeline until after
next year's election, delaying needed jobs and energy. By
that time, Canada's oil will be on its way to China.
That the American people are merely human sacrifices on
the altar of environmentalism is seen by Thursday's
announcement by the State Department that it has caved in
to greenie demands that the Keystone XL pipeline intended
to bring Canadian tar sands oil to the American market be
rerouted around an aquifer that supplies water to eight
states.
The process will take at least a year, kicking the oil
can down the road past the November 2012 election. It is
our fear that if President Obama is re-elected, the
project will be scuttled permanently. That may be a moot
point because as we have noted Canada is quite ready to
run a pipeline to its West Coast and send its tar sands
oil to an energy-hungry China.
Political considerations weighed heavily in the decision
by an administration in which re-election trumps
everything else, whether it be rising energy prices or the
need for jobs. Environmentalists had warned the
administration they might find other things to do in 2012
if Keystone XL was approved.
"This is not just about LCV (League of Conservation
Voters), which spent nearly $1 million to help elect Obama
in 2008, or any other group that engages in electoral
politics in the upcoming election," said Tiernan
Sittenfeld, the league's senior vice president for
government affairs, in a not-so-veiled threat.
"It's about people out there who care deeply about the
environment, how much they volunteer, how many doors they
knock on, how much they contribute directly," Sittenfeld
added. "We have LCV supporters who maxed out in the Obama
campaign in 2008 who have told us they are not going to
give this time around if the president approves this
pipeline."
Ironically, a number of unions, a major part of the
Democratic base, are backing the project, including the
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the
International Union of Operating Engineers, the Teamsters,
the Laborers' International Union, the Building &
Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, and the
United Association of Plumbers & Pipe Fitters for the
U.S. and Canada. They want the jobs.
The Keystone XL pipeline would
carry as much as 700,000 barrels of oil a day, doubling
the capacity of an existing pipeline operated by
TransCanada in the upper Midwest. The 36-inch pipeline
carrying oil derived from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, to
Gulf Coast refineries would create about 20,000
construction and manufacturing jobs, union jobs, that will
increase the personal income of American workers by $6.5
billion.
