Commentary - Pipeline pushers strain to justify job creation

By Jeanne Johnson, 7th Congressional District Citizen's Climate Lobby,

Alexandria, MN

Senator Bill Ingebrigtsen (December 23 Echo Press) used up an enormous number of words and space trying to convince us that the Keystone XL Pipeline would create lots of jobs. Aside from the morally murky notion that one created job offsets the asthma and heart disease caused by air pollution, the billions lost in the floods, droughts and wind storms seen this past decade ($52 billion in the U.S. in 2011), and the environmental degradation caused by tar sands oil, he's just plain wrong about how pipelines create jobs.

Let's look at the job realities.

Lots of economists have studied job creation, especially since the 2007 slump. In one study, they found for every $1 million of investment, the following number of jobs are created:

Oil and gas – 0.8 (less than one job).

Coal – 1.9.

Retrofitting buildings – 7.0.

Mass transit – 11.0.

Smart grid – 4.3.

Wind – 4.6.

Solar – 5.4.

Biomass – 7.4.

(Pollin, Robert et.al. "The Economic Benefits of Investing in Clean Energy," University of Massachusetts, 2009.)

This suggests that we can create several million jobs if we can show the investment community that there's money to be made in renewable wind, solar, biomass, etc. A clear signal from the government, such as the carbon tax, would cause an explosion of spending on research, development, installation and maintenance and create millions of jobs as investors seek profits from future demand for renewable energy. Congress cries crocodile tears over the lack of new investment in America but ignores the most obvious solution.

Instead, Senator Ingebrigtsen insists that the best way we can create jobs is to help our Canadian neighbors get their oil to the coast where it can command world prices. Shell Oil, Tesoro and Conoco, who own nice chunks of the tar sands, think so too. Shell owns a major refinery at the end of the pipeline at Port Arthur, a Foreign Trade Zone where the dirty oil being exported to China or Europe won't even have to pay U.S. taxes. We get all the risks and none of the benefits.

Ingebrigtsen believes pipeline claims that diesel and gas prices will go down if we import more dirty oil from Canada. But oil analysts say otherwise, claiming it will drive gas and diesel prices up, either by reducing the supply to Upper Midwest refineries or by commanding world oil prices at Gulf refineries. Farmers should let Ingebrigtsen know they don't support the pipeline.

It was reported last month that the U.S. is now exporting more gasoline and petroleum products than it imports, the most since Harry Truman sat in the White House. Why? Americans are using less gas because of fuel efficiency and refineries are more efficient. We certainly don't need and won't get any of that tar sands oil, so why should we endanger our precious soil and water and that of the Canadians who suffer the ill effects of living with these dirty mines, the 50 square miles of toxic waste ponds visible from outer space? Like the senator says, there's plenty of oil for our needs right in the United States.

Senator Ingebrigtsen claims that a "coalition" of legislators has sent letters urging support for the pipeline. Alas, this does not speak well for the legislators or, perhaps, their source of information. Fearful of offending Big Oil, they continue to trumpet misleading propaganda while we who are offering real facts are called “extremists.”

Tags: opinion, commentary