A report that was secretly released in Dec. by the Energy Department of President Joe Biden showed that cancelling the government permits for the Keystone XL Pipeline took away thousands of jobs plus billions of dollars.
At the time, the cancellation drew broad criticism.
The Keystone XL construction would have generated between 16,149 and 59,468 jobs yearly for a two-year period, according to Energy’s analysis. This is an increase from a 2014 report produced by the department that found that 3,900 direct jobs with a total of 21,050 jobs would have been generated over the two-year construction phase.
The research also demonstrated that, over the course of the project, there would have been a positive economic effect of between $3.4 and $9.6 billion, citing numerous studies.
After Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in Nov. 2021, the Energy Department was mandated by law as a result of Senators Steve Daines (R-MT) and Jim Risch (R-ID) successfully introducing an amendment to the bill that required such a report. The study was supposed to be published within 90 days, according to Fox News, but it wasn’t until more than a year later.
The Energy Department claimed that the project would have had little impact on permanent jobs in a statement to Fox News Digital, but the spokesperson made no mention of the thousands of jobs that could have been created during the pipeline construction.
“The United States Department of Energy,” according to the agency, “published a report reviewing current analysis on economic and employment consequences of the XL section of Keystone pipeline. It was determined that there were little effects on employment, with an estimated 50 permanent jobs being created had the pipeline been in operation.”
The project was reportedly more than halfway finished, on schedule to be finished in 2022, and would have been operating in the early months of this year (2023) before Biden canceled the permit.
Approximately 830,000 barrels of oil would have been transported through the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the United States. A labor agreement between four unions with TC Energy that was signed in August 2020 guaranteed that the project would have produced 42,000 American jobs as well as 2 billion in total earnings.
Keystone XL was no longer a feasible project when Biden revoked the permits, and its constructor, TC Energy, moved on, confirming its closure in June 2021. An appeal by almost two dozen states seeking the court to reinstate the licenses for the pipeline was dismissed by federal justices.
