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January 19, 2012

Obama wrong on pipeline

Dalton Daily Citizen





President Barack Obama has once again failed to make a decision in our country’s best interest, blocking construction of the Keystone XL pipeline that would bring oil from fields in Canada to refineries in Texas.

The administration’s decision will not keep those fields from being developed or that oil from being used. It will just guarantee that the oil will be sold to China, not the United States.

Environmentalists say they fear that oil leaks from the pipeline could contaminate the massive Ogallala Aquifer as it passes through Nebraska. But it would cross just 250 miles of the aquifer in Nebraska. To put that number in perspective, there are currently almost 21,000 miles of pipelines crossing Nebraska, including almost 3,000 miles of hazardous liquid pipelines. Many miles of these pipelines pass over the Ogallala Aquifer.

Further, crude oil has been produced in Nebraska since 1939. In 2009, Nebraska produced more than 6,000 barrels of crude oil per day from 18 different counties. Seventeen of these counties are located in areas overlying the Ogallala Aquifer, according to the Nebraska state energy office.

An independent study by the Perryman Group found that construction of the pipeline project could pump $20 billion into the U.S. economy and help improve U.S. energy security by providing a more stable source of consistent energy supply over an extended period of time. The study further concluded that once the pipeline is operational, the states along the pipeline route should receive an additional $5.2 billion in property taxes over the life of the pipeline. And the $7 billion pipeline project could create more than 20,000 high-wage manufacturing jobs and construction jobs during the next two years across the U.S.

It seems the president is either unaware or unconcerned that the national unemployment rate stands at 8.5 percent, that more than 1 million people have left the work force since the recession officially ended in June 2009, or that the labor force shrank by 170,000 just in the past two months.

Otherwise, he would not turn his back on a project that that could boost jobs, economic growth and our nation’s security. This was the wrong decision.

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