Keystone XL Pipeline

I can almost hear you saying, “Oh, no. Not again,” but did you hear Governor Romney say in his speech at the Republican Convention that if elected president, he would immediately okay the Keystone XL pipeline because it would provide one million new jobs?

TransCanada Chief Executive Russ Girling estimated the number of  jobs created at 20,000 — which he said included 13,000 direct construction jobs and 7,000 jobs among supply manufacturers. Then he said those were “one person, one year,” jobs, meaning that if the construction jobs lasted two years, the number of people employed in each of the two years would be 6,500.

That’s a WHOLE lot different than the 1,000,000,000 jobs Mr. Romney says the pipeline will provide.

Here’s what Michael Brune, President of The Sierra Club wrote:

“Exaggerated job numbers play well to public concern about unemployment and the economy, but they are a hollow promise. The numbers from TransCanada — the company behind the pipeline — have already been discredited as fuzzy math for using tricks like double counting and incidental employment for dancers, choreographers, and speech therapists.”

Mr. Romney also indicated he thinks the pipeline will provide oil to the United States. Contrary to that, Retired Brigadier General Steven Anderson says this pipeline will do nothing in the way of increasing our oil supply.

 The Keystone XL pipeline will not reduce America’s dependence on Middle East oil, or do anything to get us off oil completely, which is key to America’s national security future. Much of the oil produced by Keystone won’t go right to American gas-tanks – it is to be exported, meaning we will need to import oil the same as before.

Finally, Anderson said it will actually make this country less secure.

Those aren’t just scary words. As I first reported in January of this year, one of the Keystone Exxon/Mobile pipelines broke under the Yellowstone River spilling 40,000 gallons into the water before it could be sealed. By June of 2011, the first Keystone Pipeline had sprung 12 leaks spilling 2100 gallons of crude in my home state of Kansas. In North Dakota, a Keystone Pipeline fitting broke spewing  a 60 foot geyser of 21,000 gallons of crude oil into the air.

Don’t forget that the proposed pipeline would go right over the Ogallala Aquifer, the shallow underground  water reserve upon which eight states from South Dakota to Texas depend to irrigate their crops.

Mr. Romney should take a better look at the Keystone XL pipeline.

Proposed expansion of Keystone pipeline