Donald Trump recently revived the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipeline this week, two highly condemned projects that were delayed by former President Barack Obama over environmental concerns.
The president signed executive orders Tuesday that will make it easier for Energy Transfer Partners to build the Keystone oil pipeline from Alberta, Canada to Nebraska and connect to an existing pipeline to bring oil to Illinois.
Despite the promise of job creation, a State Department report from 2014 says that the project will create only 35 permanent positions. There would be a total of 42,100 year-long positions— 16,100 jobs are directly related to the pipeline and 26,000 would be created indirectly.
In contrast, a 2011 study from Cornell University’s ILR Global Labor Institute, concluded that the project could destroy more jobs than it creates, "Furthermore, pipeline spills, pollution and increased greenhouse gas emissions incur significant human health and economic costs, thus eliminating jobs.”
Way back in 2013, President Obama dismissed the Republican fabrication that the Keystone pipeline would reduce unemployment.
“Republicans have said that this would be a big jobs generator,” he told the New York Times . “There is no evidence that that’s true. The most realistic estimates are this might create maybe 2,000 jobs during the construction of the pipeline, which might take a year or two, and then after that we’re talking about somewhere between 50 and 100 jobs in an economy of 150 million working people.”
