Thanks to the Obama administration who instead of thinking about doing the right thing attempted to “appease some of those 5% minorities.” The project is now dead in the water with 18 months set to complete a scientific study to figure out the effect this would have on the region. From Canada’s financial minister Flaherty :
“The decision to delay it that long is actually quite a crucial decision. I’m not sure this project would survive that kind of delay.”
So obviously the decision to post-pone the decision (kind of ironic) forces the decision anyhow. So what are the effects of this decision?
As I mentioned in an earlier post here
We lost lower priced oil (via Canada a non-member of OPEC which means its oil will be cheaper than the oil we import from Venezuela.
We lost jobs that would have existed in construction (of the pipeline by private oil firms.) and we lost jobs in the maintenance of said oil pipeline.
We lost energy security in the form of a good ally who would have sold it to us first before this nonsense.
And to top this list off, the environmental impact of this decision is ZERO. No matter what, the same oil will be drilled and burnt. The same CO2 will be emitted. The same oil extraction process will be used in Canada. And to top all of this off, we simply shifted the environmental issues from a pipeline to shipping since we will ship the oil from Venezuela instead which I might remind everyone here uses the same process as Canada to extract the oil from tar-sands. Net effect environmentally: ZERO.
So in other words, the project is likely going to be dead in the water, environmental groups should be happy for once again forcing the good citizens of our country into unemployment and poverty. Is this really what they want? I mean as I explained in that same earlier blog post, the only possible decision was to go through with the pipeline, have cheaper oil, energy security and more jobs. Now we are stuck with fewer jobs when times are rough, more expensive oil, and the same energy security as before. You would think that our current president had never told the country he believed in energy security. But alas, I just guess that circular reasoning works with some people.
Some nay-sayers at this point might point to how this decision “postpones” the decision, but that is frankly nonsense. Any kind of 18 month period of waiting is plenty of time for Canada to just turn around and start shipping the oil to China and the rest of Asia. The pipeline deal was there so that we could beat the Asians to the punchline and get cheaper oil out of the deal. Since Canada typically does support us, unless we botched the deal like Obama did, we were going to get the oil and China would get whatever we couldn’t buy. This now means that there is no incentive to install the pipeline at all, because once the oil is heading out to Asia, the deal is dead in the water and we are stuck with the trickle we currently have. What incentive does Canada have to install a pipe-line with us after they install one with the west-coast where they can just ship it to Asia?
So China gets energy independence out of the deal and we get stuck with more lost jobs and more rhetoric from a president who is clearly after the award for “worst president in the history of the US”.
After all, it is not everyday that a president can take credit for destroying as many jobs as he has. Whether he is evil or stupid is a truly great question that I do not believe I can answer. All I can state is that we must all remember who sided against jobs and sided with activists who have never worked a day in their lives un-like the people who wanted to work to feed their families on the Pipeline construction crew. Those people will join the ranks of the unemployed and the gas prices in the USA will remain the same.
So the USA is just a big loser in other words. We do not like jobs apparently or progress. We like paying more for the same product. So remember this the next time someone talks about the evils of the Keystone Pipeline and remind them that this Pipeline not being completed only cost American Jobs in the end.
Image credits:
http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2011/09/new-poster-zerobama-worst-president.html
http://www.resistanceisfruitful.com/blog/2010/02/08/circular-reasoning-aids-tests/
BenfromMO 