Economy, environment stand to gain from Keystone XL
According to an economist for the largest U.S. trade association for the oil and national gas industry, jobs may not be the only reason why President Barack Obama should approve the Keystone XL pipeline.
For every dollar the U.S. would spend buying Canadian oil, Rayola Dougher, senior economic advisor at the American Petroleum Institute (API), says Canada would spend 90 cents buying U.S. goods and services.
"Crude is going for about $100 a barrel or so. So just imagine 700,000 barrels a day, initially, at $100 a barrel, and then 90 percent of that money coming back to the United States," she poses. "You very rapidly can get to about 500,000 jobs within the next 20 years or so."
Merely building the pipeline would create upwards of 20,000 jobs. And as Dougher goes on to point out, the Keystone XL pipeline would give America half of what it currently imports from the Persian Gulf.
As for the environmental concerns that have delayed the Keystone XL pipeline, the API senior economist says Canada will look to China if the U.S. rejects the pipeline, which would pose a bigger threat than any one pipeline.
"In terms of an environmental perspective, it's much cleaner for the world to have it come to the United States by pipeline than it is to put in a tanker and move it to Asia," she explains.
As previously reported on OneNewsNow, until a decision is made, the Institute for Energy Research estimates the XL Pipeline delay will continue to cost the United States $70 million a day. The requirement for a decision on the pipeline was included in the two-month extension of the Social Security payroll tax cut approved by Congress.
