(NRCC News) – It became clear the moment Joe Biden took office he was determined to destroy all of the progress that his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, made during his term to help our country recover from eight years of Barack Obama. The first act of business he attended to on his first day was to shut down the Keystone XL Pipeline, a move that destroyed thousands of jobs, cost billions of dollars, and played a significant role in jacking up energy prices.
Let’s give the man a round of applause for his accomplishments.
Well, the current administration recently published a report, mandated by Congress, all of the positive economic benefits that we would have been enjoying right now had Biden not shut the project down, with a low-key admission that this decision cost the American people in a big, big way, according to Thomas Catenacci of Fox News.
“The report, which the Department of Energy (DOE) completed in late December without any public announcement, says the Keystone XL project would have created between 16,149 and 59,000 jobs and would have had a positive economic impact of between $3.4-9.6 billion, citing various studies. A previous report from the federal government published in 2014 determined 3,900 direct jobs and 21,050 total jobs would be created during construction which was expected to take two years,” Catenacci writes.
Right after taking office in January of 2021, Biden canceled the pipeline’s permits, which led to the project completely shutting down. Great work, Mr. President. Really. I mean, who needs jobs and affordable energy anyway, right?
“The Biden administration finally owned up to what we have known all along — killing the Keystone XL Pipeline cost good-paying jobs, hurt Montana’s economy and was the first step in the Biden administration’s war on oil and gas production in the United States,” Sen. Steve Daines. R-Mont., went on to say in a statement delivered on Thursday. “Unfortunately, the administration continues to pursue energy production anywhere but the United States.”
“These policies may appeal to the woke left but hurt Montana’s working families,” he added. “I’ll keep fighting back against Biden’s anti-energy agenda and supporting Montana energy projects and jobs.”
The Department of Energy was required to put out the report after Daines and Sen. Jim Risch, a Republican from Idaho, were successful in inserting a piece of legislation that mandated it into the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was officially signed into law by Biden in November of 2021. The agency was then required to publish their findings within 90 days of the bill’s passage, but they ultimately took more than a year before putting it out.
“In a statement Thursday, the DOE noted that the project would have had minimal permanent job impacts, but didn’t mention the thousands of jobs that were estimated during the construction of the pipeline,” Catenacci revealed.
“The U.S. Department of Energy released a report evaluating existing analysis on economic and job effects of the XL portion of Keystone pipeline,” the DOE said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “It concluded there were limited job impacts, with approximately 50 permanent jobs estimated to have been created were the pipeline operational.”
Catenacci continues, “Keystone XL had been slated to be completed early this year and transport an additional 830,000 barrels of crude oil from Canada to the U.S. through an existing pipeline network, according to its operator, TC Energy.”
“The project labor agreement that TC Energy signed in August 2020 with four labor unions promised the pipeline would create 42,000 American jobs and provide $2 billion in total wages,” Catenacci adds. “TC Energy ultimately gave up on the project in June 2021 as a result of Biden’s decision. Last year, a federal judge tossed a legal challenge from nearly two dozen states asking the court to reinstate the pipeline’s permits.”
What’s even worse is the fact that making this decision to shut down the Keystone XL Pipeline moved the United States away from energy independence, increasing our need to purchase oil from overseas, thus putting us in a weaker position on the global stage.
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