Keystone Pipeline Looks Worse With Each Study
BOSTON (TheStreet) -- With the recent release of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report concluding that the climate is still changing and humans are almost definitely culpable, debate over the construction of the Keystone Pipeline has returned to the limelight.
In addition to the IPCC report, anti-pipeline activists have leverage with the release of reports by the Center for Biological Diversity and Cornell University finding that building the pipeline could likely have negative consequences not only for the environment, but the economy.
The Center for Biological Diversity found that the pipeline would cause significant damage to wildlife habitat for more than a dozen sensitive species, including whooping cranes, northern swift foxes, piping plovers and black-footed ferrets.
The center reviewed documents on the pipeline compiled by the State Department and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which acknowledged that oil spills from the pipeline would almost certainly occur -- probably at an average of 1.9 times and about 34,000 gallons of tar sands oil released each year. According to the center, State Department documents also acknowledge that construction of the pipeline could likely crush northern swift fox dens.
Despite this, the Pew Research Center for People and The Press found that two-thirds of the public support its construction here, even as two-thirds of Americans support stricter regulations on power plant emissions and have become disillusioned with domestic hydraulic fracturing, known as "fracking."
Proponents of the pipeline say it will create tens to hundreds of thousands of jobs for Americans and bring in billions of dollars in revenue to the U.S. A study by Cornell University casts some serious doubts on these claims.
After reviewing TransCanada's own data, the Cornell researchers found that the Keystone project will create only between 2,500 and 4,650 construction jobs, all of which are expected to be temporary and last an average of two years -- making no impact on the country's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate, which is expected to remain at 9.1%.
"Job estimates put forward by TransCanada are unsubstantiated and the project will not only create fewer jobs than industry states, but ... could actually kill more jobs than it creates," the study found.
The reason: The presence of the pipeline might likely drive up gas and diesel fuel prices in the Midwest by 10 to 20 cents per gallon -- an estimated total cost of $2 billion to $4 billion to people at the pump, draining spending from payrolls. And any short-term economic and job gains from the pipeline will be undermined by the costs incurred by oil spills, which are likely. The report cites the 2010 figures for oil spills in the U.S., which caused $1 billion dollars in damage.