Where did President Barack Obama get his underwhelming jobs estimate for the Keystone XL pipeline?
“My hope would be that any reporter who is looking at the facts would take the time to confirm that the most realistic estimates are this might create maybe 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 [chuckles] jobs in a economy of 150 million working people,” Obama said in an interview with The New York Times.
Obama’s 2,000 jobs figure is only a fraction of what his own State Department estimated earlier this year — that 42,100 jobs would be created during the construction of the pipeline. This raised the question of whether or not the president had even read his own administration’s review of Keystone.
However, when pressed by the Hill newspaper on Monday, the White House was silent on whether or not the president had read the State Department’s report.
On Tuesday, the White House failed to respond to a request for comment from The Daily Caller News Foundation which asked whether the president had read the review and what his source was for his Keystone jobs numbers.
The State Department told the Hill in a statement that they agreed with Obama’s assessment of the pipeline, adding that it was still going over the pipeline’s application and the 1.2 million comments that were filed by opponents and supporters.
“The President was clearly stating that the proposed project would have a negligible impact on the overall US job market, which was the finding of the State Department in the initial, Draft SEIS (supplemental environmental impact statement),” a State Department official told the Hill.
The Washington Post gave Obama “two Pinocchios” for his Keystone figures and reported that Obama may be relying on an estimate from the Cornell University Global Labor Institute, which opposes the Keystone pipeline.
The Post reports: “Cornell figures each segment of the pipeline requires 500 workers per segment. The southern leg of the pipeline is now nearly complete, so that means 10 segments are left. That translates into 5,000 jobs over two years, or 2,500 a year.”
The Post adds that “because part of the pipeline is complete, the State Department has revised downward its estimate of the construction jobs to 3,900 jobs per year over a one-to-two-year period. That’s still a higher figure than the one generated by opponents.”
The State Department estimated that the pipeline would “potentially support approximately 42,100 average annual jobs across the United States over a one-to-two-year period.” This estimate was even higher than one given by TransCanada, the company looking to build Keystone XL. They estimated that the pipeline would create 20,000 jobs — 13,000 in construction and 7,000 in manufacturing.
“A president disparaging private-sector jobs while backstage at a jobs rally is beyond belief. The president’s own State Department reported that Keystone would support upwards of 40,000 jobs. In this economy, any source of private job creation should be welcomed with open arms,” said Michigan Republican Rep. Fred Upton in a statement.
A 2010 study commissioned by TransCanada said the pipeline would create 120,000 jobs, which included indirect jobs in other industries such as hotels, restaurants and transportation.
The State Department also found earlier this year that the pipeline would not significantly impact global warming or harm the environment, which angered environmentalists and drew a rebuke from the Environmental Protection Agency.
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