Steve Scalise, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, would like President Barack Obama to "greenlight the Keystone pipeline."
"With one stroke of the pen," he said at CPAC on Friday, "the president could create over 25,000 jobs."
Off by several thousand, actually.
According to a study conducted by the Cornell University Global Labor Institute, "The project will create no more than 2,500-4,650 temporary direct construction jobs for two years, according to TransCanada’s own data supplied to the State Department," and, "The company’s claim that KXL will create 20,000 direct construction and manufacturing jobs in the U.S is not substantiated."
More to the point, we are talking about jobs that are "temporary" and "non-local":
In its application to the NEB, TransCanada stated:
"Total direct and indirect construction employment that will amount to about 5310 person- months of employment and an estimated $58 million in wages and salaries. This includes the Hardisty B terminal, pipeline and eight pump stations and their associated power lines... Construction is short term, workers’ families are not expected to move into the area and area medical facilities are adequate to deal with any on-the-job injuries."
In the US, construction jobs will be created in the 6 states along the pipeline’s route. Based on the FEIS estimates, there would also be between 3 and 7 person-years of construction labor per mile of new pipeline construction in 5 states—Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas. There would also be about 60-120 person-years of construction labor to upgrade the existing Keystone pipeline in Kansas.
The State Department’s FEIS states that “the proposed Project has the potential to generate substantial direct and indirect economic benefits for local and regional economies along the pipeline route.” However, the report also estimates that just 500 to 900 workers are expected to be hired locally—roughly 10-15% of the total workers hired. In some states, this could mean that the number of local workers hired for the project could be fewer than 100.
Based on data provided by TransCanada to the State Department, only between 506 and 1,387 workers would be hired locally.
The Cornell University study goes on to note that "the industry’s claim that KXL will create 119,000 total jobs (direct, indirect, and induced) is based on a flawed and poorly documented study commissioned by TransCanada," and that "KXL will not be a major source of US jobs, nor will it play any substantial role at all in putting Americans back to work. Even if the Perryman figures were accurate, and all of the workers for the next phase of the project were hired immediately, the US seasonally adjusted unemployment rate would remain at 9.1 percent — exactly where it is now."
In its own draft environmental impact statement approving of the pipeline, the State Department acknowledges that "after construction is completed, the project would generate 35 permanent and 15 temporary jobs, primarily for routine inspections, maintenance and repairs."
Below, a liveblog of the latest updates from CPAC:
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