Will Keystone XL Pipeline Create Many Construction Jobs? (Op-Ed) - Harper is pissing in the wind

Anthony Swift is an attorney in the International Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). This piece is adapted from one that first appeared on the NRDC blog Switchboard. Swift contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Last week, President Obama commented on the limited job-creation potential from the Keystone XL tar-sands pipeline. The remarks generated a response — from many in the media and Keystone project backers — that obscured the President's point.

Supporters of the Keystone XL pipeline continue to pitch the project as a national jobs creator. President Obama has countered that in an economy of 150 million people, the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would be a "blip relative to the need." The President observed that the operation of the Keystone XL would only generate about 50 jobs while its construction would generate about two thousand jobs over a year or two.

The construction of Keystone XL, which would generate 3,950 person-years of work according to the U.S. Department of State, has a job creation potential on par with building a shopping mall or the campus renovations the University of Oregon announced last week.

Moreover, after it's built, Keystone XL will only employ between 35 and 50 people — and some of those positions will be filled in Canada. That's a small fraction of the long-term employment benefits one could expect from a shopping mall.

By pitching the tar sands industry's pet project as a national jobs generator in an economy of 150 million, Keystone XL's Congressional boosters are incurring a huge opportunity cost on behalf of constituents who need jobs, not empty promises from the oil industry.

While the Keystone XL tar-sands pipeline is not a national jobs creator, it would be a significant new source of climate pollution, adding 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon pollution to the atmosphere over its estimated lifespan. For that reason it fails the President's climate test and should be rejected.
The controversy surrounding the President's comments on the construction jobs associated with Keystone XL comes down to the critique presented in an update by Washington Post Fact Checker on July 30. The President said the construction of Keystone XL would "create about two thousand jobs over one to two years," while the Fact Checker believes it would have been more accurate instead to say that the project would employ 3,950 workers for a year.

Whether the construction of Keystone XL will generate 3,950 person-years of work for one year or 1,975 person-years of work for each of two years, the reality is that the President is right — Keystone XL is not the national jobs creator its proponents are making it out to be: The Fortuna Galleria Mall project on Long Island generated about 3,000 construction jobs, according to the New York Times; the University of Oregon's campus renovations are expected to generate about 2,700 construction jobs, and yet have gone largely unobserved by Congress; the Gulf Coast Galleria in D'Iberville,

Mississippi is expected to create fifty times more permanent jobs than Keystone XL, according to the Washington Examiner.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/keystone-xl-pipeline-create-many-construction-jobs-op-154526503.html