Critics: Biden’s Keystone XL cancellation to cost jobs, won’t help climate

By Bethany Blankley | The Center Square

Canadian company TC Energy is suspending work on the Keystone XL oil pipeline as President Joe Biden followed through on his pledge to revoke its federal permit.

The 1,700-mile pipeline project was first proposed in 2008. It was blocked by former President Barack Obama, citing environmental concerns. But revived under the Trump administration.

The pipeline, if finished, would carry approximately 800,000 barrels of oil a day from Alberta, Canada, to the Texas Gulf Coast. Passing through six U.S. states, the project has faced multiple legal challenges.

“As a result of the expected revocation of the Presidential Permit, advancement of the project will be suspended,” Calgary, Alberta-based TC Energy said in a statement.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney tweeted and published a lengthy statement saying that he was “deeply concerned” about Biden’s repeal.

Bruce Parker/TNR

A protest slogan urges America to “keep oil in the ground.”

“Doing so would kill jobs on both sides of the border, weaken the critically important Canada-U.S. relationship, and undermine U.S. national security,” Kenney said.

Marty Durbin, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute, said Biden’s decision will put thousands of Americans out of work and isn’t based on science.

“The pipeline – the most studied infrastructure project in American history – is already under construction and has cleared countless legal and environmental hurdles,” Durbin said in a statement. “Halting construction will also impede the safe and efficient transport of oil, and unfairly single out production from one of our closest and most important allies.”

Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA) President David Holt said, “President Biden bowed to the demands of a handful of special interests on his first day in office at the expense of American laborers, workers, families, and small businesses who depend on reliable energy.”

Pipelines and advanced pipeline technology provide the safest method for transporting energy, the Department of Transportation reports. The quantity of oil the Keystone XL would carry every day is equal to 4,150 trucks or 1,185 rail cars, Holt notes.

“This is a pipeline that has already committed to being zero carbon emissions and operated by 100% renewable energy,” he said. “It is unfortunate that, in this instance, ideology has trumped common sense, and will achieve the opposite environmental effect than was intended.”

Critics argue not completing the pipeline will reverse more than a decade of work accomplished by the Department of State, Department of Energy and PHMSA. The agencies concluded that Keystone XL would be “an incredibly safe pipeline with state-of-the-art monitoring technology, would lower gasoline and diesel prices and would reduce carbon emissions associated moving oil into American refineries.”

“Shutting this project down at a time when the U.S. has returned to being a net oil importer and lost the energy independence that took decades to achieve will, once again, put energy prices in the hands of foreign nations at the cost of our families and small businesses,” Holt added.

Revoking the permit defies environmental and economic logic, the Heritage Foundation said in a statement.

“The climate impact of the pipeline will be practically undetectable, as confirmed by the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency and State Department’s environmental impact assessment. Blocking Keystone XL isn’t going to stop the production of Canadian oil or prevent oil from reaching refiners in Texas and Louisiana,” Heritage Foundation senior analysts Nick Loris and Katie Tubb, said in a statement.

“Instead, prohibiting the pipeline will create more inefficient and riskier methods of transporting crude, whether that is more tankers from overseas or carrying Canadian crude by truck or rail. At a time when economic growth and job creation are desperately needed, is the administration going to dismiss so many thousands of well-paying, shovel-ready construction jobs?”

Environmental groups saw the move as the first among many on their wish list.

“These huge first steps show Biden is serious about climate action, but re-entering the Paris Agreement and canceling Keystone must be the start of a furious race to avert catastrophe,” Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “Much more is needed, and we’re increasingly hopeful the administration will stop approving new fossil fuel projects and speed the transition to clean, distributed energy that climate science and justice demand.”

Image courtesy of Bruce Parker/TNR

8 thoughts on “Critics: Biden’s Keystone XL cancellation to cost jobs, won’t help climate

  1. Biden is just an uninspiring functionary with a pen, sitting at his desk with a mask.
    It is beyond ludricous.

    The stupidity of the Biden handlers is off-the-charts.
    Every day they tell Biden to get out his pen.

    Do the invisible Biden handlers really believe the WORLD will use less oil, because of halting Keystone XL?

    Here are some numbers that should wake up anybody.

    WORLD AND US PRIMARY ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND CAPITAL COST
    https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/world-total-energy-consumption

    World energy consumption is projected to increase to 736 quads in 2040 from 575 quads in 2015, an increase of 28%, according to the latest from the US Energy Information Administration, EIA.
    See URL and click on PPT to access data, click on to page 4 of PowerPoint
    https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/

    Most of this growth is expected to come from countries that are not in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, and especially from countries where demand is driven by strong economic growth, particularly in Asia.

    Non-OECD Asia, which includes China and India, accounted for more than 60% of the world’s total increase in energy consumption from 2015 through 2040.

    PARIS AGREEMENTS

    China, India, and other developing Asian countries, and Africa, and Middle and South America need to use low-cost energy, such as coal, to be competitive.

    They would not have signed up for “Paris”, if they had not been allowed to be more or less exempt from the Paris agreements

    Obama agreed to commit the US to the Paris agreements, i.e., be subject to its financial and other obligations for decades.
    However, he never submitted the commitment to the US Senate for ratification, as required by the US Constitution.
    Trump rescinded the commitment. It became effective 3 years later, one day after the US presidential elections on November 3, 2020.

    If the US had not left “Paris”, a UN Council likely would have determined a level of renewable energy, RE, spending, say $500 billion/y, for distributing to various poorer countries by UN bureaucrats.
    The Council would have assessed OECD members, likely in proportion to their GDPs.
    The US and Europe would have been assessed at 100 to 150 billion dollars/y each.
    The non-OECD countries likely would continue to be more or less exempt from paying for the Paris agreements.

    SUMMARY OF CAPITAL EXPENDITURES, CAPEX

    The analysis includes two scenarios: 1) 50% RE by 2050, and 2) 100% RE by 2050.
    The CAPEX values exclude a great many items related to transforming the world economy to a low-carbon mode. See next section.

    50% RE by 2050

    World CAPEX for RE were $2,652.2 billion for 2010-2019, 10 years
    World CAPEX for RE were $282.2 billion in 2019.
    World CAPEX for RE would be $24,781 billion for 2019 – 2050, 32 years; compound growth 5.76%/y

    US CAPEX for RE were $494.5 billion for 2010 – 2019, 10 years.
    US CAPEX for RE were $59 billion in 2019.
    US CAPEX for RE would be $7,233 billion for 2019 – 2050, 32 years; compound growth 8.81%/y

    100% RE by 2050

    World CAPEX for RE were $2,652.2 billion for 2010-2019, 10 years
    World CAPEX for RE were $282.2 billion in 2019.
    World CAPEX for RE would be $60,987 billion for 2019 – 2050, 32 years; compound growth 10.08%/y

    US CAPEX for RE were $494.5 billion for 2010 – 2019, 10 years.
    US CAPEX for RE were $59 billion in 2019.
    US CAPEX for RE would be $16,988 billion for 2019 – 2050, 32 years; compound growth 13.42%/y

  2. ole dementia Biden has already put 50,000 people out of work on his first day in office Keystone XL pipeline employed a lot of workers. Shows you how much the fool cares about American citizens. A course if we were communist Chinese he would have been kissing our butt, This is what happens when you have election fraud. Hold on to your pants it’s going to be a rough ride.

  3. “The climate impact of the pipeline will be practically undetectable” – Was research done to determine how much shipping oil by train will increase carbon dioxide, sulfur, particulate emissions? I think it’s absurd to believe those emissions increases will alter the climate, but trains follow river valleys (they don’t climb mountains very well) and cross through cities and populated areas where their emissions may have an effect. Note that Biden is a dogmatist: “We choose (ideological) truth over facts.” That’s like “The Earth is the center of the universe and Copernicus will go to hell for saying it isn’t.” The AGW Progressives have decided that trains are the least polluting way to ship petroleum because Soros reputedly owns the trains and he supports the Democrat party.

  4. President Biden’s Executive Order ending the Keystone XL pipeline does nothing to mitigate climate change……It will actually make things much worse.

    Biden has chosen climate change dogma over scientific EPA studies on pipeline safety and the impact on global warming while also ignoring rational business analysis when he followed AOC’s and the climate alarmists’ advise and killed the Keystone XL pipeline.

    Notwithstanding Biden’s executive order, the Canadian oil will continue to flow into the world market place and be consumed. Some if it will be moved by truck or rail into the United States for refining and marketing or transported half way around the world to China for refining. In either case the costs will go up, as do the risk of spill accidents, higher shipping costs, thousands of high paying America jobs lost and our northern ally Canada harmed and left bewildered by Biden’s action.

    Is the Keystone XL pipeline is an indicator of how President Biden is going to govern going forward, we’re all in for much bigger and costly problems in the months and years ahead…….This is not a good decision, not good for the American worker and not good for American.

    • Peter,

      Every day, the invisible/anonymous Biden handlers are telling Biden to “get out his pen”, to sign executive orders to:

      1) Open the borders to hordes of impoverished, illiterate, unskilled illegals,
      2) Halt the Keystone XL pipeline that pipes CANADIAN crude to Houston, instead of to CHINA,
      3) Join Paris, which will cost the US people $TRILLIONS. See my above comment.
      4) Whatever else the handlers can dream up to “undo and erase Trump”.

      Biden sits behind the “Big Desk”, with mask and pen, trying to look impressive and serious, “signing” for a photo Op, duly displayed in the NYT, WSJ, etc.

      In the evening, Biden tells his admiring wife, over a sumptuous dinner:

      I have been very busy changing the world
      I am very tired fighting to change the climate, 24/7, already for a WHOLE WEEK.

      This whole charade is off-the-charts rediculous.

      FOUR YEARS OF THIS FARCE?
      https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/hiding-the-hunter-biden-evidence-to-protect-joe-biden

      • Willem:

        It’s time to put an end to these “Executive Orders”. They are disruptive and simply ways for a President to change policy to his liking without getting the buy in from the Congress and the people. We have seen this on a wholesale basis starting with Obama, then Trump and now Biden……To be followed by the next partisan sitting in the Oval Office.

        Highly politically motivated and ill considered “Executive Orders” lead to impossible societal and business planning and operations creating billions of dollars in waste and losses as in the case of the Keystone XL pipeline. All of this based U-turn changes in national policy arising from the whims of a partisan President.

        The Founding Fathers of this country set up the government to make it difficult to make major changes without the buy in of the Congress and in turn the people. Executive Orders allow the opposite. The more difficult process laid out by the Founding Fathers provides a mechanism that requires compromise and better quality decisions.

        None of this comes with “Executive Orders”…….It’s time to boot them out of our Government.

  5. Biden is going to make the the entire U.S. in the image of Vermont. That’s right… like Vermont – with the lowest GDP per capita in the country. We’ll all be ‘equal’ in this lowest-common-denominator, everyone -gets-a-trophy world. Excepting, of course, those who are actually ‘in’ the government skimming off the top. It’s Orwell’s Animal Farm personified. Where all the animals are equal, but some take longer to cook.

    OK. Enough complaining. So, what do we do about it? Start with public K-12 education. Nip this weed (no pun iteneded ’till I noticed it 🙂 ) in the bud.

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