Recently politicians and special interest groups have been running TV ads advocating construction of the Keystone pipeline. The usual claims are that we need it for energy independence and jobs. Neither claim is true.
The Keystone pipeline is planned to move foreign oil to the U.S. Gulf Coast, where it will be refined and exported to foreign countries.
Much of the oil that is planned to be transported by the pipeline is already being produced, and the oil companies are not putting it into self storage units until the pipeline is built. The oil is being moved to refineries mostly by rail, resulting in the creation of thousands of high-paying continuing jobs, as opposed to the mostly temporary jobs the pipeline creates. The need to move oil by rail from Canada and the U.S. has resulted in a backlog of some 60,000 rail tank car orders, enough for a train 600 miles long. That means hundreds of construction jobs that will last for years, as well as a huge demand for steel.
To build the pipeline, the foreign company demands the U.S. give it power to seize private land from American farmers and ranchers. This is clearly unconstitutional, as a judge in Nebraska has recently ruled.
To sum it up, if you are for the Keystone pipeline, you are for destroying American jobs and trashing the U.S. Constitution, all for a project that does nothing to supply oil for Americans. If you are for Keystone, you favor more government and less jobs.
Kirk Thompson
Stevensville