Are You Really Interested in Creating Jobs Mr. President? Part II by Mark Wohlschlegel
Obama once again talks about creating jobs but his actions simply don’t show it! Once again, he is either stupid or lying! He is not stupid. Just a week ago, the Obama administration announced it would delay the construction of the $7-billion Keystone XL pipeline that would bring in more than 700,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada to the Texas Gulf coast.
The transparency of what is behind this decision is so obvious. Obama has delayed this project solely for his political benefit ignoring what this project would mean in terms of jobs and national security resulting from moving away from the importation of oil from hostile sources. Specifically, Obama’s two large constituents, the labor unions and the environmentalists, are split on this issue. The tactic that Obama has used is to delay this decision until after the November 2012 elections, thereby not alienating either of these groups and not costing him votes! At stake are hundreds of thousands of jobs, and the generation of revenues for the states where the pipelines passes. These states include Montana, South Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Texas who have projected $5.2 billion in property tax revenue.
The environmentalists are behaving like this is the first pipeline to be built in the US. In fact, there is over 50,000 miles of oil pipeline in this country that have been operating for years without any mishaps. Even the Obama administration determined it to be safe with the completion of the EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) found that the pipeline posed no danger to the environment.
The risk now is that by delaying this decision, Canada may chose to export the oil to markets other than the US like China. So what is at risk in delaying this decision driven by Obama’s decision are precious new jobs and new sources of oil supply away from hostile nations who wish to do harm to the US.
To make matters worse, just on the coattails of this decision, the Obama administration has delayed shale gas drilling in Ohio for up to six months by cancelling a mineral lease auction. The move was done to appease environmentalist on the pretext of studying the effects of hydraulic fracturing, a technique used to extract shale gas. The US conservatively with the fracking techniques has identified over 150 years of natural gas reserves within the contiguous United States. The delay is estimated to cost the US 200,000 jobs! Once again, national security is further jeopardized by this administration’s persistent intentions to not develop and explore our own God given energy supplies.