Keystone-related jobs a ?blip?? Really, Mr. President?

An energy research organization finds Barack Obama's latest comments on the Keystone XL pipeline "troublesome." Those same comments also have raised the hackles of the Canadian company proposing the pipeline.

Speaking over the weekend to The New York Times, President Obama said "the most realistic estimates are this might create about 2,000 jobs during the construction of the pipeline, which might take a year or two, and then after that we're talking about somewhere between 50 and 100 jobs in an economy of 150 million working people." On that basis, he claimed Keystone?s jobs creation would be ?a blip relative to the need.?

Dan Kish, senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research, responds to those comments.

"The truth of the matter is, there is going to be direct employment and then a huge number of jobs because they have to make the steel, they have to buy the equipment, they have to do all the other things,? he explains.

?In an economy where so many millions of people are unemployed and underemployed, the idea that the president of the United States would scoff at any jobs ? especially these kinds of jobs, these family-raising wage jobs ? is troublesome."

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Earlier this month, Consumer Watchdog released a report [PDF] claiming, among other things, that the initial estimate on the number of construction jobs for the Keystone project had been revised from 20,000 to 9,000. OneNewsNow contacted TransCanada for confirmation of that report and was given this response:

"TransCanada has not revised the number from 20,000 to 9,000. For the original Keystone XL project, there were 13,000 construction and 7,000 manufacturing jobs. After the original Keystone XL permit was denied, we split the project in two ? 9,000 for Keystone XL and 4,000 for Gulf Coast. And 7,000 manufacturing jobs that built equipment, pipe, pumps, etc. for both. So the 20,000 number still holds as a total."

According to The Washington Times, TransCanada ? as well as officials on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border ? ?reacted furiously? to Obama?s skeptical comments on the economic impact of the 1,600-mile Keystone XL pipeline.

Source: http://www.onenewsnow.com/politics-govt/2013/07/30/keystone-related-jobs-a-%E2%80%98blip%E2%80%99-really-mr-president

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