Sound Work For Americans On The Keystone Pipeline? WAIT

Keystone Oil Pipeline

A controversial pipeline from Canada that the White House delayed last month would bring jobs and increase energy security in the United States.

Alexander J. Pourbaix

Time is absolutely of the essence to obtain the approvals needed so Americans can begin to experience the benefits of Keystone,” Alexander J. Pourbaix, president of energy and oil pipelines for TransCanada TRP -0.02% – the company that proposed the pipeline.

Brent Booker (L)

Brent Booker head of the construction arm of Laborers International Union of North America said that because of the jobs it would bring “this project is not just a pipeline, it is in fact a lifeline,” for his members.

Construction industry unemployment reached 27% in 2010 and hovered around 20% for much of last two years, he said. The pipeline would create 20,000 immediate jobs, and an additional 2.5 million jobs in the not-so-distant future Pourbaix and union members said.

“They would have started a couple months from now” without the delay, Pourbaix said. “Americans were hired and are "Very" ready to go to work.”

The pipeline would dramatically increase TransCanada’s capacity to bring tar sand oil from Canada to Texas and would ease crude oil gluts in Cushing, Okla. and North Dakota.

Opponents have protested the pipeline’s potential environmental impact to wetlands and higher levels of greenhouse gas produced by burning tar sands. A State Department report estimated an increase of between “3 and 21 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually” from burning fuel from tar sand instead of crude oil.

Last month President Barack Obama backed the decision by his State Department to delay a ruling on a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline until 2013 to study alternatives to the environmentally sensitive Sand Hills area in Nebraska.

Gov. Dave Heineman

Last week Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman signed a law ordering the state pay for a new environmental assessment to consider alternatives to the Sand Hills.

Wednesday a House Republican introduced a bill that would force the Obama administration approve the project.

committee chairman Ed Whitfield

“Since the president did not, Congress in my view must act,” said committee chairman Ed Whitfield, Republican from Kentucky. Obama’s decision to review the project “appears to be blatantly political,” he said. “This is the most technologically advanced and safest pipeline ever proposed.”

The State Department had already reviewed the project, Pourbaix said. With 27,000 monitoring points and the ability to remotely shut values, “Keystone will be safe,” he said.

Jane Fleming Kleeb

Jane Fleming Kleeb, head of nonprofit group Bold Nebraska that opposes the project as it stands, argued that tar sands had not been fully studied and cited problems cleaning up 800,000 gallons of tar sands oil that spilled into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan last year.

Kleeb said she stood with Obama in wanting to study the project further.