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President Obama rejects Keystone XL project
Beaumont Business Journal | November 9, 2015 | Link

President Barack Obama rejected the proposed Keystone XL pipeline Friday, Nov. 6. The announcement came days after TransCanada, the company building the pipeline, asked that its permit application be paused due to another challenge to the project in Nebraska.

"This morning, Secretary (John) Kerry informed me that, after extensive public outreach and consultation with other Cabinet agencies, the State Department has decided that the Keystone XL Pipeline would not serve the national interest of the United States. I agree with that decision," President Obama told reporters gathered for the announcement at the White House Friday. "Now, for years, the Keystone Pipeline has occupied what I, frankly, consider an overinflated role in our political discourse. It became a symbol too often used as a campaign cudgel by both parties rather than a serious policy matter. And all of this obscured the fact that this pipeline would neither be a silver bullet for the economy, as was promised by some, nor the express lane to climate disaster proclaimed by others."

The president said the pipeline would not make a meaningful long-term contribution to the U.S. economy.

"So if Congress is serious about wanting to create jobs, this was not the way to do it," he said. "If they want to do it, what we should be doing is passing a bipartisan infrastructure plan that, in the short term, could create more than 30 times as many jobs per year as the pipeline would, and in the long run would benefit our economy and our workers for decades to come. Our businesses created 268,000 new jobs last month. They’ve created 13.5 million new jobs over the past 68 straight months -- the longest streak on record. The unemployment rate fell to 5 percent. This Congress should pass a serious infrastructure plan, and keep those jobs coming. That would make a difference. The pipeline would not have made a serious impact on those numbers and on the American people’s prospects for the future."

The pipeline also would not lower gas prices for American consumers, President Obama said.

"In fact, gas prices have already been falling -- steadily," he said. "The national average gas price is down about 77 cents over a year ago. It’s down a dollar over two years ago. It’s down $1.27 over three years ago. Today, in 41 states, drivers can find at least one gas station selling gas for less than two bucks a gallon. So while our politics have been consumed by a debate over whether or not this pipeline would create jobs and lower gas prices, we’ve gone ahead and created jobs and lowered gas prices."

President Obama added that shipping dirtier crude oil into the U.S. would not increase America’s energy security.

"What has increased America’s energy security is our strategy over the past several years to reduce our reliance on dirty fossil fuels from unstable parts of the world," he said. "Three years ago, I set a goal to cut our oil imports in half by 2020. Between producing more oil here at home, and using less oil throughout our economy, we met that goal last year -- five years early. In fact, for the first time in two decades, the United States of America now produces more oil than we buy from other countries."

The United States needs to transition to a clean energy economy, President Obama said.

"That transition will take some time," he said. "But it’s also going more quickly than many anticipated. Think about it. Since I took office, we’ve doubled the distance our cars will go on a gallon of gas by 2025; tripled the power we generate from the wind; multiplied the power we generate from the sun 20 times over. Our biggest and most successful businesses are going all-in on clean energy. And thanks in part to the investments we’ve made, there are already parts of America where clean power from the wind or the sun is finally cheaper than dirtier, conventional power."

The proposed pipeline would span nearly 1,200 miles across six U.S. states, moving more than 800,000 barrels of carbon-heavy petroleum daily from Canadian oil sands through Nebraska to refineries in the Gulf Coast.

U.S. Rep. Brian Babin, from Texas's 36th congressional district which includes Orange County, said he is not suprised by President Obama's decision, but that it is the wrong one, nonetheless.

"The vast majority of Americans support Keystone – including a bipartisan majority of Congress – because it is good for the economy and strengthens America’s energy security," Rep. Babin said. "By kowtowing to radical environmentalists and rejecting tens of thousands of good-paying American jobs, the President has decided to put his extreme environmental agenda ahead of the needs of hardworking Americans. The President’s decision undermines U.S. economic and national security by allowing Canadian oil to be shipped to China rather than the U.S. The President should be ashamed of this -- and the foolish way he handled the entire process.”

This wasn't the first time Rep. Babin has criticized President Obama's stance on Keystone. In a February interview with the Business Journal following President Obama's decision to veto Keystone, Babin responded, "He is vetoing a bill that is going to provide 42,000 jobs in the middle of a reces­sion. I don’t understand."